


Return You In Any Way Damaged

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (TV 2020), Dracula - BBC, Dracula - Netflix
Genre: AU where Jonathan 'lives'; Mina doesn't flee; and Dracula takes them ALL on the Demeter, Blood, Cunnilingus, Dracula touches Jonathan a lot, F/M, Gore, I aim to fix that, I forget to say I also mean to do justice to Jonathan, M/M, Menstrual Sex, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Non-Consensual Touching, Oral Sex, The show did Mina dirty, and one bastard enjoying it immensely, and to misbehave, can't keep his hands off him, eventually, now that the jonathan chapters have started, plus smut, the sexual stuff has arrived!, three people slowly going insane on a boat, what a surprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: 'Johnny is alone, wherever this beast has hidden him; she and Sister Agatha locked in here and at his mercy. The Sister said he came to the convent gate in the skin of a wolf and shucked it off like a snake. 'As if he gave birth to himself', she had said. He shed nothing. He’s a wolf wearing a man’s comfy skin.Mina holds Sister Agatha’s hand so tight it feels like it’s folded up inside her own, like paper.'Dracula is less inclined to discard his (thus far) finest bride, and takes more care with preserving his potential future spouse. Consequently, there is another mysterious passenger in Cabin no. 9.
Relationships: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula/Jonathan Harker, Jonathan Harker/Mina Murray
Comments: 141
Kudos: 280





	1. Mina I

**Author's Note:**

> So, here's how it goes:
> 
> I love Dracula 2020, despite its faults and for my sins, which are both not a few.
> 
> I love love love the relationship between Dracula and Agatha Van Helsing.
> 
> I love and hate what the show did to Jonathan, and I DEEPLY hate what the show did to Mina.
> 
> SOOOOOOOOOOO...

She wants water. First one swallow for the sides of her throat that are sticking together from the dryness _,_ the rest to wash Sister Agatha’s poor neck and her face and hair. She wants Johnny. She wants something to change the poor woman into and to throw away that bloody habit. Yes, she wants a dress for herself that doesn’t smell and feel of something gone to rot inside it. She wants another candle to drive the shadows into the corners and away, so she can stop fancying that something’s going to spring out of the dark and attack them. She wants just a slice of meat or crust of bread, and to know how she can possibly feed Sister Agatha. She wants to know where the monster’s keeping them; if anyone heard her screams and beating on the door; if they heard them and purposefully chose not to come. She wants the sun. She wants Johnny, she wants Johnny.

Mina picks the crumbs of blood that she can see by the candlelight from Sister Agatha’s hair and teases out knots in place of a comb. Strange to see a nun with such hair. Don’t they cut it all off when they take the veil?

Sister Agatha’s face is slack from whatever the beast’s done or drugged her with. Her mouth opens to show her teeth even more than when she’s awake. She breathes soft and easy for a time until the harsh rasping always comes back, it’s like something invisible pressing on her chest and mouth and smothering her. The candle catches in the hollows of her eyes; Mina squeezes her own eyes so tight shut she sees a chequered pattern of light, just to stop thinking of skulls.

Three times she takes the candle and searches the room they’re trapped in. There’s an empty cupboard. There’s a basic chair at a basic dressing table. There are oil lamps on the walls with no oil in them. There’s a chamber pot to squat over when the need comes. There’s a locked door and apparently thick walls. There’s a wooden floor without so much as a crack that she can shout through, to anyone who might be below.

Finally, there’s daylight coming weak through the window, so Mina blows out the candle to save it for future darkness, but there's still no real sun. She takes a risk: clambers onto the bunk and over Sister Agatha, holding her nasty clammy skirts out of the way, stands on the pillow and looks through the window. Or, yes, the porthole. She was right about the rocking movement. He has them on a boat, still in the harbour.

He has them on the boat, but where’s _Johnny?_ What’s he done with Johnny? Why hasn’t anyone come when she screamed a great while back, and again only a little while ago? There must be people on the ship and on the lower decks by now to load things, or even just walking on the top deck.

She tugs at the fastening on the window. Bangs at it. Bangs on the glass. She screams as much as her dry sticking throat will let her, pitiful. She waves at people she can make out on the dock until her arms and back cramp. Useless. Anyone on shore will be looking at the deck or the mast, not the cabin windows.

She’s climbing back down as Sister Agatha moans. She might be dreaming.

Oh. Oh Lord.

Think of what Johnny dreamt in that awful castle, horrible, dreadful! So again, Mina tries to wake Sister Agatha, to get her out of the nightmare and to not have to hear those moans. She shakes and shouts and pinches, she even presses down on an eyebrow, in the spot where a medical student said he could always waken a drunk with enough pressure. Sister Agatha still sleeps.

It’s been, Mina can’t measure it, but it must be a day and night and part of another day at least since the convent. The Sister must be just as starving hungry as she is herself. And she’s sweated so much she’s surely parched. When will she, why doesn’t she wake? What else did the beast do while drinking from her? What’s he doing right now? And doing to Johnny? Johnny, Johnny!

A pain’s growing hard in her head from the thirst. Her stomach’s twisting knots with hunger. They settle down when she sits by the bunk and rests her temple on it. She takes Sister Agatha’s hand in both of hers to hold tight, the one that she sliced in order to taunt the monster with her blood. Mina wishes she’d seen that. Sister Agatha staring down the naked Devil. _Mocking_ him! Despite every terror that came after it

(because of it)

that was such a marvellous thing for her to have done. Mina touches the cloth still somehow tied about the palm, full of dried blood that scrapes her chin. She doesn’t mind it so much. It’s a more honest blood than the monster’s leavings on the Sister’s habit.

She finds the feel of Sister Agatha’s hand beneath the wrapping. There’s no heft to it. She feels like a loose glove filled with long stones. She feels deeper than sleeping, yet she’s warm. Mina kisses the back of her hand and holds that part of the Sister to her cheek. She wants Sister Agatha back and this poor sleeper gone. She wants Johnny. She wants water, she can’t even swallow for the dry and her head’s hammering. Oh, she wants Johnny.

His coming is too sudden, not even a clicking lock or a creak or a footfall. No warning, only his voice far too loud, slick and near to her back. ‘Good _morning_ , Mina dear. I must apologise for taking so long to come and see if you both were settled. I needed to make sure all affairs were in order.’

She doesn’t ask the how and why of him getting in through a door she knows is locked. It doesn’t matter and she doesn’t have the spit for it. She twists about to look at him while using her body to hide Sister Agatha. He must not see her. That is important. It’s important too that she ask first: ‘Where is Jonathan?’

‘Well, he’s…’ And the beast makes her wait while he fiddles with his cape and drops it on the chair. Under her arms the prickles start, her twisty stomach turns heavy. Johnny is alone, wherever this beast has hidden him; she and Sister Agatha locked in here and at his mercy. The Sister said he came to the convent gate in the skin of a wolf and shucked it off like a snake. _As if he gave birth to himself_ , she had said. He shed nothing. He’s a wolf wearing a man’s comfy skin.

She holds Sister Agatha’s hand so tight it feels like it’s folded up inside her own, like paper.

He finally finishes up: ‘Resting.’ It sounds false. Something the monster’s decided on in that moment, as if to protect her from the truth. Except she knows he doesn’t feel any need to shield her from anything. So perhaps he is being truthful. ‘Boarding, and having to endure all of our fellow passengers, it really took the strength out of him. He was quite ready for a long lie down.'

Mina thinks like her journal in a time of crisis, so. So. What has he given her? Johnny is on the same ship as them. They boarded only a little while ago. There are passengers, so this is not just a cargo ship and there might be someone to hear them other than the crew. He called them fellow passengers, so he must move in their circles and not be solely here or with Johnny all the time. There could be chances to raise some alarm and get out of here. There’s too much to hold onto. All the thoughts are slipping from her, if she could only debate it with Sister Agatha!

She shifts up off the leg that’s gone numb and gets one foot flat on the floor, so as to stand and protect the Sister. ‘We need water. You need to wake her so she can eat. Or are you going to starve us?’

His face goes still, and she thinks that’s his reply, not even speaking out loud that yes, naturally he’s going to starve them to death. Yet now he smiles. His terrible smile.

‘I must apologise again, Mina; amid all our bustle and haste I quite forgot about your mortal needs. I thought I’d gotten back into the practise of meals with Johnny, but clearly not. I hope this heals the breach.’ He points.

She risks looking to the table for only a second. A tray that certainly wasn’t there when he was dropping his cloak; black bread, two bowls, bottles with wine and water and two cups.

Mina holds the Sister’s hand to her breast so that she won’t leap for the food the _water_ and fall into whatever trap he’s set. ‘Not until you wake her up.’

‘Oh, I don’t think we should disturb her. She looks so peaceful. And she wouldn’t thank you.’

‘She needs to _eat.’_

‘Which is your problem, not mine; but if you’re that worried about our darling Agatha-’

He moves fast, the horror of him so close to her. He rips Sister Agatha from her. She only feels the Sister pulled out through her fingers and not the feel of his skin, thank God, but the chill of him stays in her hand like she’s touched a church floor, a gravestone.

She gets herself over to the wall so that he can’t simply lean over to grab her. The beast stands quite still with his fingers gentle around Sister Agatha’s wrist to take her pulse, as if he were her family doctor come calling. Did, did he drink that idea from Johnny?

‘A good strong heartbeat.’ That terrible smile goes at last as he starts breaking open the cloth around her palm.

Mina gets her foot flat under her again, to run. Nowhere to run to. ‘Don’t _touch_ her!’

‘A little too late for that, pet.’ Not even mocking now, dismissing her utterly as he opens the wound to the air. The cloth falls as he takes Sister Agatha’s hand in both his own and bows his head to her palm.

It is not a kiss, what he does next. Kiss is too sweet and neat a word. What he is doing is sucking and licking and making a meal of Sister Agatha’s hand. He’s like a dog cleaning his feeding bowl. He drops to one knee, meaning Mina has the full true horror of seeing his tongue squirming all over the healing flesh, as if he’s trying to break her wound back open and suckle on her bones. That Agatha still sleeps through what the monster’s doing to her, that’s when the sickness starts pooling under Mina’s own tongue.

The wine decanter. Hit him. Stop him. Mina stands up on one living foot and one dead. She creeps along the wall.

The beast raises his head, he breathes deep, why? _Why_ does he breathe? _‘Ah.’_ The sound he makes, she’s so very grateful she can’t see the face, and he lets Agatha go - only to put a hand on the bunk’s head rest and lean down, as if he were a banker just home and greeting his wife with a kiss.

Mina owes it to Agatha not to look away. She must watch what the Sister is sacrificing to keep her alive, and a given value of safe. There’s nothing to see but the back of the monster’s head, but she’s too late to stop up her ears and the wet tearing and Agatha gasping in pain but still never waking. The sound of his drinking and his pleasure.

The door is locked. She wants help, help for Agatha, she wants Johnny, God, please, Johnny.


	2. Agatha I

The heat of the sun means Agatha and Jadwiga left off working in the garden and must sit in the cool provided by the eastern wall. Agatha wants to throw off her veil and coif and set her sweating head free. Only the other sisters will be watching from higher up the wall in disapproval, and even more important Jadwiga would not say anything but neither would she approve so, fine, they both stay.

There is something odd about Jadwiga here, with her shoulder under Agatha’s cheek. When it was always Agatha propping her up and standing over her. _There is something strange here_ she says, and again when Jadwiga’s hand covers hers and squeezes it, _This isn’t right, how are you here?_

_Don’t you_ want _me here, Agatha?_

_Oh heavens, yes, but-_

Jadwiga is saying else something very important which Agatha should heed. Instead she’s curling her free fingers tight and pressing them to her stomach. She cannot reach into Jadwiga’s lap and through her habit, shift and hair to her cleft her heat her heart, and uncurl and curl her fingers again and lay her head down to kiss her cunt until they both find their pleasure,

it’s not the sin for it’s _not_ a sin, it’s the danger that this time there will either be Jadwiga’s joy or Jadwiga looking at her like a stranger or a monster

she surely wouldn’t

oh but she _wants_

Jadwiga presents her other hand for Agatha to take. She holds it over her lap precisely where Agatha had hoped to plunge, and so she takes it palm to palm to squeeze

it hurts like a blade

Jadwiga speaks _Ohhhh,_ daring _, Agatha!_ in a cruel cruel way. The sunlight blows out. Agatha is caught and she must run, only lovely smiling Jadwiga holds her hands most crushing tight. _May I cut in?_

Her wrists are set loose only so Jadwiga can take those too sharp nails to her face to dig. To rip.

A blow of terror and disgust right in the gut at Jadwiga’s face splitting in two. Jadwiga pulls her own veil away as flesh sloughs off her fingers, and there’s a crop of black hair and that fucking grin bringing such absurd relief, _oh, a_ dream, _thank you God_ , _only a dream._ The horror can be endured. This, too, shall pass. Just a dream.

_Is this how you do it_? She points to the pieces of Jadwiga sinking at their feet, though she can’t stand the sight of them deflating like empty bladders. Think of them as pottery pieces of a hollow saint, uncaring of their wreckage. And this is a dream, and also Jadwiga moved to the convent in Debrecen years ago; naturally it was strange that she was here in Budapest, or wherever this is he’s made for them. Knowing she won’t wake (if she does ever wake) to find Jadwiga dead with the other sisters helps her move forward. _You give your victims false visions of desire to quiet and sedate them? As you did to Harker, making him dream of Mina?_

_Most effective, I find._ He sheds the habit along with the last of not-Jadwiga’s flesh. _But I also found I simply couldn’t sit this out. You're too delightful._

He’ll surely take control of the dream again in good time, but first. _To keep them quiet, and yet to make their blood rush and flow?_ In which case the neck might not be the choicest place for him to drink from. _Drinking from the arteries that feed the groin, where the beat of the heart is strongest?_ She should have examined Harker’s legs and genitals more closely as well. Or at least asked him about any fresh scars there, though a highly awkward subject to raise with Miss Mina present.

_That, and in addition it keeps them sweet and happy. You surely know a happy pig makes for the tenderest meat._ He picks a bit of not-Jadwiga off him at that, chewing it like gristle.

_You hide behind the faces of their lovers to stop them resisting you, ravishing their minds alongside their bodies. Coward._

Everything blows out.

Where is.

He is standing behind her.

_The last woman who was so rude to me, Agatha, ended with a sword in her throat and her head as a football._

Ghastly image, poor Mother Superior, yet quite hilarious at the same time. She laughs and hopefully wouldn’t do so when awake. _But was she wrong? You_ do _have no shame._

_I control this dream of yours. I could strip you of your flesh and voice, leave_ you _bloody and naked and scorned. Turnabout is fair play._

_Ah_. An old fear, nakedness in dreams. Less effective now she’s seen a beast squeeze out of another beast to lick her blood off a knife, or an old lover’s face snapped apart like the Host and fall like the crumbs; dreading nudity seems rather trite now. _You were hardly ashamed by your own nakedness and begging, Count Dracula. I am equal to it._

_Ahhhhh_

That is all there is before pain comes sharp in her neck while pleasure comes and comes and comes through everything else of her which means he is surely drinking from her but she doesn’t _care_ she is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually found the whole 'Dracula dresses up in someone's skin' to be grossly intriguing. I just wish that someone didn't have to be Jonathan. So here, it isn't, but we still get the gorey spectacle. Jonathan still has all his own skin!
> 
> Who spent far too much time looking up nineteenth century terms for orgasm and finding nothing that fit before deciding 'sod it'? C'est moi.
> 
> Happy pigs - and animals in general - supposedly make for tastier meat. Naturally Dracula applies the same approach to the animals that he partakes of.


	3. Jonathan I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fair bit of non-con touching and general vampire-ness, thought nothing too graphic. Rule of thumb for the Johnny chapters, I fear.

Waking up means escaping from, or to, some form of respite. What he does now is open his eyes from nothing to find nothing. No light. A barrier just in front of him and one at his back. One at his feet when he kicks down and one that he knocks his head against, so hard it should hurt like the devil. He squeezes his hands up from where they were pressed against his chest to find the corners of the box. So close and cramped that he could turn his head and meet the edges of the dark squeezing his temples.

Then only banging and the terror.

No room to move and push or shove, no way to get any purchase. Barely any sound from the wood when he strikes it. Only his own breathing and cries with no cracks for them to get out, trapped in here with him.

There’s a split in him. There’s one him, the panicking flesh clawing for a way out, there’s the other him crying inside his skull to _calm, calm, save your breath, there is only a little air in here, I’ll suffocate, calm, damn you, **calm!**_

He turns to kicking at the wood below him, it might loosen the joins. As much force as he can put in. A breath out for every strike to give him the rage and will to kick again. Nothing. Nothing. How long has he done this? How long since he took a breath?

A third him, as if he’d placed a hand on the shoulder of the two others during their squabbles. _How long?_

Lying back and holding still is agony of a crawling twitching sort, but it’s done. He can take stock.

He’s screamed and his voice should be gone. With this close a space, all the air should be gone. How long since his lungs started to grow tight for lack of that air? Was there a time at all since he opened his eyes?

A woman, he remembers she had said. What was it? _Breathing was mostly habit._

His heart should be bursting from screams and all the moving, drumming under his palm. Nothing.

His panic settles back into thought, it’s gone. There’s room – only, only in his head! - for recalling, and the weight of knowing this is a space in which he will _not_ die. Not from lack of air.

The box. He should begin again with this box. So. Smaller even than a coffin, from what he remembers they have more room for a body than this. Not as small as those boxes in the dreadful cellars. He’s cramped, not folded up like a pen knife.

There had been those larger boxes. The one with the baby. God. At least this space is surely too small for there to be anything else in here with him.

Surely.

Panic.

He kicks fore and aft to find any thing that might bite or crawl up his body to start on his chest. His face.

Nothing again. Panic settles back. He’s alone in here.

What was outside here? Smaller than a coffin but something someone had used in place of anything else? Is he buried?

Panic.

He strikes at the wood and feels it rattle just a little touch. If this were all underground there would be the pressure of the earth all about him to prevent that. Not buried. Yet. Panic settles back.

Is he still in the convent? in which case he can shout for help and the nuns can rescue or kill him, does it matter which as long as he dies outside this box? Returned to Castle Dracula, where screams will bring horrors? Is waiting in here better than whatever’s out there?

Mina. More than panic, terror.

Tear at the wood. Dig his nails in to push up and up. Why does he not need to breath but still fail in his limbs? Where’s Mina? Before his eyes opened, she was held in the arms of Sister Agatha, the last thing, what then? Mina, Mina Mina!

Splinters beginning under his nails, then the barrier’s gone and there’s only air, light and at last pain jammed hard in his eyes. With the pain there is, of course, _that_ face wrinkled and lips pursed in polite concern, and that voice. _‘Calm_ , Johnny! I’d thought a spell in there would do you some good, but look at the mess you’ve made!’

Johnathan Harker’s mouth is dry as bone with no saliva left in him, but this is too much to bear. He recalls a cat hissing and spits that way with teeth bare and breath, still breath, bellowed between them. Some minute drops of spittle somehow form in the middle of it, they strike the Count’s chin.

‘All right; you’re in a mood. Understandable. Up, up, let’s have a look at you.’

Nowhere to burrow away from those hands grabbing his neck and legs. Hoisting him like they did in his last hour, the last minutes of his life. Settled against the Count’s chest with his head this time close to where the beast’s heart would be, on a man. Jonathan swings up to try and hit him right in the face. He aims too high and gets him in the hairline, and the Count shakes him off before he can dig his nails into flesh. ‘Now, _Johnny._ ’ As if he were a boy complaining about being put to bed.

Bed. A bunk that the Count’s turning them towards. A room in very weak daylight. Walls of wood. Not the convent, not the castle. Where? Jonathan finds and yanks the Count’s collar to get him looking down, shaping every word most carefully. ‘Where. Is Mina?’

The Count stops quite still. He has to open his mouth again after saying nothing the first time; he seems surprised. Eventually he says it. ‘Sleeping like the dead.’

He’ll kill him. He must kill him. He twists and wriggles to get out of that embrace, the bastard only holds him tighter. ‘A poor choice of words? Sleeping the sleep of the just, then. And quite unharmed.’ He starts towards the bunk again. ‘I found her most unreasonable, though after the trial of getting here I shouldn’t blame her. You’ve certainly picked a spitfire there, Johnny; she’s adorable.’

Don’t believe. Not for a second. He mustn’t fall to that trap. The Count lies and lies. Either Mina escaped him or she’s dead, lock it away, now or it’ll bury him. But Mina, Mina!

He asks, to make it appear he believes, ‘Sister Agatha?’

‘Now, _she_ was delicious.’

That, Jonathan does believe. That brisk, brave woman. ‘Did you make her suffer?’

The Count begins unloading him. ‘Hardly. I _do_ keep saying to you all, I mean to make her last. Well, not to you, until now.’ He stands to unfasten his coat. ‘Let’s see how you’ve done.’

Nothing makes the least sense, although really sense departed with nary a backward glance long ago. Jonathan watches until the Count begins to unfasten his shirt cuffs; he seems still somewhat unfamiliar with them. In the middle of his first attempt is the chance for the door. He puts everything left to him into his back and legs, judges the distance, and aims for the floor.

His feet hit the boards but.

There’s a grip at his throat so hard he feels something within give under that force. At last there’s pain.

Back down into the mattress, the world upside down and topsy turvy and he sees the wall behind them, that grip forces his head back so far. The pain is cold and immense. That grip will surely go through his neck to the mattress below, cut his head clean off. He tries to get some purchase on the Count’s shirt and another grip takes his hands and crushes his wrists together, more things give way. The Count digs a knee into his groin that brings a warmer agony.

The force on his neck eases and leaves. If he wants, he could look up at the Count. He couldn’t want something less, but better to see what’s coming. Hard to speak after the blow to the throat. ‘What. Doing?’

‘You took a stake through the _heart_ , Johnny boy. Even with a good meal it takes time to fix, though you did put it there yourself. Let me see.’

He thinks the Count might rip his shirt open all uncaring. No. He appears quite concerned for the buttons, undoing Jonathan from breastbone to belt, and once is undone he folds each flap of cloth to the side before starting on skin. Will he peel his skin and flesh aside as well? Think of a butcher trimming a carcass, a medical student with, ha, a cadaver!

Even now he can still laugh. Regrets it when the Count smiles wider. He won’t watch those nails do their horrid work. He keeps fixed on the Count’s face and watches him watch the path of his hand, waits for any twitch or frown that’ll warn the itch of the nails will turn to blades and stab deep.

Those plump lips shape into a whistle Jonathan can’t hear as the pain bursts not sharp from without, throbbing deep within as if, as, couldn’t, _Mina Mina_

The Count let him go at some point.

He lies heavy on his side with that cold sweeping out to the edges of his body and away. All he can do just at that moment is finish his last thought: as if something squatting in his heart had been roused and started tearing strips from the chambers holding it in.

‘Well _done_ , Johnny! I knew you wouldn’t stay down for long!’

He gets a hand and arm steady and actually pushes himself up. As easy as if he had never come to Castle Dracula and the Count’s embrace. ‘You said. A meal.'

Naturally the Count doesn’t reply to that, donning his coat again and walking back to the crate he plucked Jonathan from. Instead, as he closes the lid, ‘How would you feel about a walk up on deck this evening?’

Deck. The window through which the daylight comes, a porthole. A boat. He gets his feet onto the floorboards again just as the Count turns to face him and he can’t try to bolt. ‘Where. Are we headed.’

‘ _Johnny_ , don’t be obtuse. Your little dive off the wall wasn’t _that_ hard.’

So. So, so.

Already on way to England. How long since they got underway? The Count wouldn’t have let him rest in that box for too long. How long until they reach England? Why a ship at all; train is faster! But, it means, time. Dracula still has to get to his destination. So much could go wrong in that time. On a ship. If he can raise the alarm!

He hasn’t spoken for too long, quick! ‘If you’re passing yourself off as an ordinary passenger, won’t I cause some comment?’

‘Why would _anyone_ on this ship be so coarse as to stare or gossip about _poor_ Mr. Renfield, my solicitor? Who has spent the day resting in his cabin, since he is presently recovering from – what did I say it was?’

It appears Jonathan also still has to stop for a laugh. Piddling little thing, but it’s good. Meanwhile the Count seeks and finds the world with evident satisfaction, and a clap of his hands: ‘Malaria.’

‘Recovering? I’m _dead.’_

‘From which you are presently recovering.’ The Count comes back to him very swift across the cabin. He shrinks back into the bunk to keep away from that touch, only the beast clasps his face and pulls him up until one foot’s back on the floor, so he won’t tumble or hang from those fingers. ‘You are such a quick learner. You utter beauty.’

A flush of heat as sure and thorough as the cold agony the Count created. Flattery, the desire to earn more praise meted out in that gentle tone with that particular regard. Lies. Something the Count surely planted in him to keep his meal docile even after death. ‘I’m hardly that, after your tender care.’ He covers the Count’s hands with his own and hopes for some sign of pain in the beast’s face as _he_ digs in with his own nails.

‘You’re always a beauty to me, Johnny; it’s the rest of the world who can’t abide a skin different to their own.’ Knocking his hands away so easily but at least letting go of his face, the Count points to the porthole. ‘But, if it reassures you, look at yourself.’

‘I’ve seen enough of your work.’

A sigh, the Count annoyed now. Excellent. ‘Just take a look.’

If he gets to the porthole, if he opens it fully, can he somehow direct more sunlight into the cabin? Like the sun off his crucifix on the castle turret? He can incapacitate the monster and - and then what? Race up onto the deck and beg some startled crew member, with his basic German, to help him drive a harpoon through the beast below deck? Possibly. No, unlikely. Besides, reaching the porthole he sees through a piercing pain that the sun’s weak, watery and hidden behind clouds, and perhaps already setting. The only reason the Count is even present right now.

There is his reflection, although surely, it’s too light yet for it to be greatly visible? There he is and that was _not_ what he had looked like the last time he saw a mirror.

Pressing close enough his nose brushes the glass, Jonathan sees his eyes less sunken in their sockets. Teeth blunter, more possible to find in a human mouth. If he looks deep enough the scars on his brow are healing, he can spot the shadow on his scalp. A trick. Delusion. He feels and finds, yes, stubble on the crown of his head. Looking at his arm it’s still immensely thin, but no longer the pallor of something a day or two dead.

He looks, in short, like a man who was certainly ill and had been so to the point of death, but who has survived.

‘Isn’t it amazing, what a hearty meal will do for a body.’ The Count’s moved to sit in the chair by the desk, one leg resting on the other knee. He looks…almost doting. Jonathan shrivels and shrinks in the weight of that look, while something else rises and cuts through that dread of Dracula’s regard.

Eyes again on his reflection, reaching to feel a tooth; in the glass it looks blunt but the point sinks into the pad of his thumb as easy as the tip of a pen knife. By curling his upper lip to show off the teeth there he sees how easy they might return to fangs. They’ve shifted about before more than once. He remembers the feeling of the change. Hunger and pleading.

The Count sinks back in the chair as if it were a throne. He grins like one of the old law professors waiting for his student to find the solution. ‘You’ll soon be Mina’s handsome, winsome Johnny again.’

There are two Jonathans, one in the glass looking sickly and hardly alive or human but still both, one with fangs and a biting monster where a heart was. There are two Jonathans, one the body that’s watching the Count and asking quite calmly, all things considered, ‘Who was it?’ and one, the one who cried for calm so they could breathe, screaming inside his skull _aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_

if the Count fed him Mina, worse if he wasn’t fed, if he fed on her by choice, he will get out of here to find a crewman to skewer him, burn him alive

‘A young gentleman named Piotr.’

That is the Count’s reply. Which is enough, Jonathan says as much and then he reaches in past his teeth to make himself wretch it up.

‘Johnny. Johnny, _Johnny,_ don’t be pettish.’ No luck with vomiting, he plucks at his stomach, if he pulls and scratches enough it would all come out. ‘There’s no point in all that; you’ve used it all up by now.’ His own blood on his nails is black but if he digs deeper, he’ll find Piotr and let him out. ‘It isn’t even as if _you_ finished him off.’ That makes it worse, don’t you see!

The grip is back around his hand that’s drawn the most blood, sharp too at the nape of his neck. ‘Johnny, you don’t do this to yourself. You don’t treat yourself like this. I do not permit it.’ The Count is so close either of them could lean forward to bite pieces off the other’s face. He reeks of thick scent. 

He can’t hope to break it, but he grabs the Count’s wrist in turn. ‘ _My_ body. You _cannot_ stop me.’

The Count shows near all his teeth, hisses. He’s made him angry, he’ll pay for it, still gratifying. ‘I think we shall have to forgo the walk tonight after all. The fever has flared up again; you clearly need more rest.'

He falls into the box face first and the lid’s hard at his back before he can push himself up. Even less likely to get out from this position. The hammer blows rock the space and hurt his ears. Yes, the Count’s very angry. Then the hammer rattles on the floor and he’s stamping away, he’s gone.

Is this to be what passes for life from now on? Stored in various boxes, pulled out to entertain the Count and shoved back in when Dracula’s done with him? He can’t bear it. Think of the days after this and years. His hand squashed near his lips that he bites for pain to focus. If he screams, it’s just howling in the dark and does nothing.

Bite, bite down. His flesh gives and his teeth meet in the middle. Not so much pain as he expected, still enough that the panic’s gone. Fill the time while we wait for the Count to come back and pull his toy out for more play.

There is Mina, the last time, screaming. No, anything but that.

There is a young gentleman named Piotr. No, not that.

Only, Piotr's face comes back. And comes back. The boy was asleep on his feet when the Count pushed him down to the earth, so Jonathan could get his share. He made such sweet adorable sounds. Piotr, you wanted to see the world, you were going to be a sailor, _why_ did you have to step out of your home on that night, out of all others? If it hadn’t been you surely someone else but, Piotr, he’s sorry, _I’m sorry._

Boards hard under his bared chest and stomach. Piotr had been softer to rest upon. What had the boy known when he’d lain underneath each of them as they drank him up? Had the Count spun him dreams of some lover while they’d ravaged him? Had he known what was happening to him all the while, going mad with horror and disgust inside his brain?

Mina. Those times they’d shared a bed, had it been such for her during sex with some great weight pressing down on her breast and pinning her, biting and slavering? How could she bear it, how could any woman, how does she bear him?

Sounds at his back. Someone is prying up the nails once more. Pulling the toy out of the box. He needs to put all his strength in his knees to get up quickly and come out fighting.

No. The grip is faster. It has him by the neck again and up, up straight but back, back and back, his spine will bend and break, try to get his legs free to save his back, kick. The Count’s smile is wet and red at the corners. ‘No,’ Jonathan says; the Count only wedges his mouth open. ‘No.’

Those lips fix over the corners of his mouth. A bursting river of something barely warm, makes it so much worse. Something strong and slick tracing his gums. Try to get away and the lips cling tighter. It seeps out round the edges. Love of God, don’t swallow, choke. Let him choke. The lips come away so he can spit, only the Count holds his jaw tight shut so just a dribble makes it out to his chin.

‘Take it, Johnny. Take her in, take her all in.’

Her? Oh. Over the Count’s shoulder the woman all in black, confused but not afraid, that would have made it worst of all. _Where did the lights go?_ she asks, _Where am I?_ Something answers through him, _You are in eternity._ She flickers away.

The oil lamps have been lit during his time in the dark. The Count leans on the side of the case with a napkin for the last of the blood on his lip. ‘Did you enjoy that? I couldn’t let lovely Valeria pass without giving you a taste.’

_Valeria._ Who had danced with the Count once long ago and survived then, while her mother vanished; but this time, the poor _poor_ lady. ‘For God’s sake, _why?_ What did it profit you? She was old and frail, what could she have given you? Why couldn’t you let her be?’

‘Completion.’ The Count props his chin on his hand. ‘And I gave her a better death than she would have found otherwise. Better to depart in a short moment of utter bliss, than a long wasting in obscurity.’

‘She was going to tell her life’s story.’ The knowledge of it drops into his head and aches, but it feels odd and itching too. Something wrong with it. What is it? Something she believed, but her belief didn’t make it true. ‘You _took_ that from her.’

Which the Count apparently finds _so_ funny. ‘And I gave her eternity in exchange. She lives in me; and in you too now, Johnny. We’ll carry her name and her face long after everyone in this age is dead and dust.’

The dreadful thing is how happy he sounds. Not even self-satisfied, as if he has truly done a marvellous thing.

Jonathan whispers into his palms, nails pressing his brow, ‘I want Mina.’

Even that the Count hears. ‘And you shall have her. Tomorrow evening. _If_ you behave. She’ll be so pleased to have her handsome, winsome Johnny back once more.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a while to write. It just kept growing, largely because Johnny needed to be brought up to speed on SO MUCH.


	4. Dracula I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really does need going over with a fine tooth comb, Dracula needs even more smart arse-isms and dwelling on Johnny! But this chapter burned in my brain and I had to get it down right away, so I will need to tweak and trim this over the next few days.

He’s overindulged. To himself alone he can admit that he’s gorged himself. Taking part of Valeria back to Johnny really was a foolish fancy on top of it all. When did he _ever_ get so soft over a bride? His last one, she’d been happy enough for waifs and strays thrown to her and not clamouring to be fed regurgitated food like a chick. Johnny is still so weak though, even if he is the best. Growing boy _must_ eat.

Some rationing will be needed. Four weeks to England, five remaining passengers not counting himself and _Mr. Renfield_ , and ten remaining members of the crew. In addition to which, Johnny must also have his first proper kill, and an easy one. He’ll have to be content with the crew, and a taste of the upper crust if he is very good.

And two that must be sustained.

He should go and check that Sokolov has done his job. Miss Mina obviously took his words to heart and didn’t tell all to the captain. Otherwise he’d smell acute terror and dread and a futile attempt at conspiracy on the man, as opposed to the normal fug of nerves, guilt and drink. Naturally she’ll still be plotting. She’s of the sort that requires a sharp lesson in order to behave herself. Another visit’s warranted. And a chance to see to Agatha again.

To cabin number 9, then, at the very witching hour of night. The ship’s steady once more, meaning someone must have found Portmann gone by now and taken the wheel. All paying bodies in their cabins and settling down into deeper sleep, their hearts steady as the vessel holding them. With Valeria and Portmann so recently in him, he can feel the push and pull of each of those hearts. They surround him like the sea’s gotten inside the ship. He’s sinking into an ocean of beating waves, an ebb and flow of pulsing blood.

He must ration himself as well as his larder. He leans on a wall lest Valeria sweeps him off his feet with her waltzing, and Portmann is _stuttering_ again, will he ever shut up, and both asking where they are, where did the light go? And Piotr before them whispering that he can’t stay, he is to go to sea, the sea the sea! A tumult of voices clawing inside him, pulling their way up so that they can burst back into the world.

_Peace, dear Valeria, you may rest._ Less politely, _Depart, Portmann. Piotr, you’re **done.**_

He is himself. He is only himself. He is exactly himself.

In cabin number 9 the lamps are still just enough for mortal eyes to see by. Does Miss Mina not like to sleep in the dark? She surely doesn’t think the light will keep him out?

Oh. No. Rather she meant him to see the display that she left for him.

_Clever_ little Miss Mina, albeit copying from a better example. Crosses continuously daubed all across the floor to make a half circle, around the bunk where she now sleeps next to Agatha. Fortunate for her that she had a handy source of paint once he departed. Though he does wonder what Sokolov made of it. If he even noticed.

Unfortunate for her - having no doubt spent a good amount of time on her knees spreading it everywhere - that it is, after all, blood. But she gave it a good try. If he goes to his own knees and closes his eyes not to see and bears the knowledge of it like a blade running under his skin, holds until the scent comes to him, holds and then.

Simply blood. Is all that it is. A few licks to clear the way and he’s through to the bunk.

Mina’s made another barrier of herself across Agatha. An arm embracing her across her breast and her head resting where he’s lately supped, giving him the flat rejection of her back. Taunting him should he be kept out by the circle. And if he should get through, a gesture of defiance. He will have to go through her first.

Valiant, truly, but as if the neck were the only spot on a body to drink from!

Very little effort to clamber over her and settle on Agatha’s far side, despite the lack of room. Her hand feels slighter in his hand than only this morning but her pulse is strong. The warm fug of her scent is very close in here, Miss Mina will need to rinse them both on the morrow. Strongest closest to her body. He could almost forgo her wrist and bury himself in the crook of her arm, or the pit of it, or her breast.

She must last. He will triumph. He will.

Wrist.

He finds the best place (radial artery someone whispers from the tumult, _hush Luther **hush**_ ) to suckle. He tastes her scent; he feels her pulse with the point of his tongue. Her skin so thin here, bones and tendons so close to make up such a clever little hand. And

he is Agatha once more; after Valeria and Portmann and Piotr, such a treat. She rises and closes over him like the blood she currently is. She encompasses him. He basks in her. She is an ocean unto herself.

He could turn to seduction and interrogation while she’s utterly consumed by pleasure, but three feedings in so short a span! They’ve left him half sick of sex. He finds that what he wants, his mouth full enough with her blood for the first swallow, is company. He wants her words rather than moans and grunts. Another real conversation is what he wants, and since Johnny isn’t inclined to give him one at present…

Weave a circle round her thrice, close your eyes in holy dream _, forget_ , Agatha.

A library of sorts. No. Rather a reception chamber with plenty of odds and ends to put her at her ease and lull her. A chess table, yes, to catch her eye and interest, the symbolism of it a hook into a different form of intercourse. For himself, coat off and clad in shirt sleeves as a casual host of the little nook he’s hollowed out inside her. And the better to show off the arms and hands that drew her eyes, and his height and width that brought her close and heightened her pulse. Oh yes Agatha, I saw you looking and smelled you too. You _thought_ it. You would never dream of acting on it, now you’re nothing but dream.

As for her. Her hair is a thing of glory when it’s not matted and lank, so let her have it in all the splendour. Let her have the habit too if she clings to it so, ha, religiously. Let her remember their acquaintance all the way up to that moment in the convent. Forget the boring, unnecessary details of how she came to be here. _Especially_ leave out little Miss Mina. All that matters is the here and now.

Board set, pieces set up. He lets the dream go and steps forward with a comment on bad books and stories to lull, lure and reel her in. What a joy their decidedly un-boring journey is turning out to be.

What a thing it is to see her smile. What a thing it is to have someone smiling at him without rancour or fear, even knowing what he is. An unfair advantage since she’s lacking crucial details, but such a smile! He fancies Johnny won’t be inclined to smile at him for a long time. He must take such tokens where he can.

The game begins. He introduces all the doomed characters in their little drama. Sokolov with his guilt and his drinking, Olgarin with his lost hand haunting the captain’s nightmares, he can smell the guilt and terror even if he’s never taken even a sip or a nibble. He gives her a dash of Piotr who was and the beautiful little one who snatched his chance and his place, and all the passengers

She interrupts him. She’s incredulous. _He is openly travelling among the passengers?_

Well, naturally. Four weeks to England. Did she think he would lie around in a box all that time? Although _Johnny_ might have to, and he gives her the sight of Johnny inside his box, crying weakly and scratching at the lid, foolish darling boy.

He doesn’t permit her a trace of fear, so for now all she can be is shocked: _the poor man._ Then, incredulous again, _So you also brought a newly turned_ undead _on the voyage with you? Ridiculous. What if someone grew curious and tried to open the box like he did?_ She moves a piece, back to the game. _Or what if he got out himself, and attacked someone? Your cover would be utterly shattered, and your great enterprise ruined._

The thought has occurred to him. He estimates the gain to be greater. _He feeds when I deem it necessary, no sooner or later. And besides, we ate before we embarked._ He could play the same joke that he did with Johnny, let her wonder who was on the menu, but he’s bored of that trick. Piotr is irrelevant. Enough of him.

He plants curiosity about intriguing cabin number 9, see if she notices. He takes her through that evening, to dinner-

Incredulous again. _Why? He doesn’t eat? And if he enjoys people, why kill them?_ Though she’s silenced by his comment about flowers.

He gives her a sight of Valeria. Ah, he hopes the two might have liked each other-

_You killed a crew member just so you could show off in German?_

_His charming Bavarian accent was the only interesting thing about him._

She scoffs

(in the flesh her brow wrinkles)

as she moves a piece. Not quite disgust, only because he will not allow it. _No self-control,_ she says. Has _she_ never dipped into a book in order to refresh her knowledge, or find the right word in another language? She can hardly condemn it in him. What of it, if his books tend to be bound in flesh?

Valeria. Yes. She would surely have liked Valeria. Despite her inability to manage pacing when telling a tale – that biographer, if they had truly existed, would have had a herculean task ahead of them – she was a generous and mighty soul. He could always introduce the two of them in the strains of himself.

Agatha asks, _Why her first? Of all the people you could have gone for, why her? She was clearly your target that night, Portmann was only taken for convenience. Were you really tying up loose ends? Or was there a deeper purpose?_

_I liked her. Can’t I simply wish to catch up with an old friend?_

_But there is something more. You drank Portmann for his Bavarian. You drank Harker for his youth and his English. Why her?_

All these questions! She’s learning too fast. Too perceptive even in dreams. _Let’s break off this story for now. Meanwhile, who are_ you _, Agatha Van Helsing?_

He plucks her from the body made up of the sparks and liquids in her brain, leaving the table and the game and their shapes behind. Frozen like an photograph, until the two of them will return to start the game up again. Like one of those moving pictures glimpsed in Johnny’s memories that he’s wild to see more of!

_Who are you, Agatha? What put you on this path, to destroying me?_

Her brain fashions for him a mix of his castle and her convent in which there are many twisting corridors and locked doors through which he pursues her or she pursues him, and

_here_ is a door which opens to find her twenty years and more ago, the shine of her vocation not yet quite worn away, late at night and unable to sleep, how unfortunate because that means she’s crouched hiding beneath the window in her cell and biting her fingers not to scream, and that is because a heartbeat before she was watching the graveyard next to the convent and saw something rise up from behind a gravestone and knock the sexton to the ground and he only had time to scream once and whatever it was it might have seen her there is something in the graveyard and it’s eating him and it might have seen her and it will come for her

‘Get. _Off_ her.’

Agatha’s nightmare flickers out as he shoves her down into a deeper sleep. He’s the one to blink and wake and find little Miss Mina staring at him from her spot against Agatha’s neck. How did he not feel her terror and rage, bleeding across into Agatha? Careless. He really is drunk.

He seals the evening with a kiss and lets Agatha’s hand fall. ‘Good evening, Miss Mina. I’m sorry to have woken you.’

‘Are you,’ she pointedly says rather than asking. She's trembling like a rabbit under the eye of a hawk, only moving just enough to hold Agatha tighter across her breast, pulling them both as far from him as she can. Which is not very far, it’s a small bunk. ‘What were you doing to her?’

‘I would have thought that obvious.’ Tedious girl.

‘You were hurting her.’ The girl looks ready to cry. Or the woman, he supposes; Sokolov must have brought her hair pins from somewhere and with her golden tresses up out of the way she looks older. Something to take a touch more seriously. ‘I won’t let you touch her again. _Never_ again.’

Adorable only goes so far. He leans forward to give her a good view of Agatha’s blood on his teeth. He could bite her throat out or nudge her away and bury his face in Agatha, where this girl-woman so selfishly set up camp. ‘Never make promises you can’t keep, Miss Mina. If you keep _this_ up, I shall take your blue-eyed Johnny and dash his brains out before your very eyes.’ Her panic bursts, yes, here come the tears. ‘And while that won’t kill him, he certainly won’t enjoy the process of being put back together.’

Her hand lying on Agatha’s shoulder darts up. She means to slap him? He’ll let her, just for the novelty. See how much of a spitfire she is with one less finger. One finger. Against another. They make a shape they make

he strikes at her hands. At where her hands were. Avoiding his blow lets her fall over the side of the bunk, one of those wretched hands pulling Agatha along with her. Both of his ladies end sprawled on the floor boards with Agatha atop Mina this time, but her legs all tangled in blankets, and the girl-woman’s arms still reaching up around the dead weight squashing her as if hoping for deliverance from the heavens, or just to push him away, holding, holding.

Two unused candles. One held on top of the other.

Oh, _clever_ Mina Murray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing Mina justice: BEGIN!
> 
> Spot some literature Dracula is quoting. Jonathan's blood is still lingering in him, and I fancy Johnny loves his poetry.
> 
> Anyone remember exactly how many crew were on the Demeter? I put ten to be on the safe side.


	5. Mina II

From here he has such a look of peace that she isn’t even afraid. He looks at rest. So dreadful. Awful that _this_ is the only way he can find peace, sucking at Sister Agatha’s wrist like a baby nursing, a kitten suckling.

He surely looked like this when he drank Johnny’s blood. She hates him.

If she moves for the candles under the pillow he’ll feel it, and toss Agatha aside to be on her in a moment. God damn him. God damn _you_ too Agatha, you claimed the circle would work but clearly it didn’t because here they all are, crammed into one bunk. Will the candles fail too? Could drinking from Johnny and Agatha means he somehow no longer fears the cross? She’ll hold the candles up, they’ll do precisely nothing, and he’ll have her by the throat.

She could. She could pretend to still be asleep. He’ll finish his meal and slip away without noticing her. Would anyone say she was wicked, if she did that?

Agatha grunts in pain from his teeth in her flesh, or the dream he has her trapped in. The beast will kill her soon. How long has he been drinking? While she just lies silent and watches him do it. She’s helping him murder Agatha. If she disturbs him now he’ll likely kill _her_.

Johnny, oh Johnny! She can’t bear it. She shan’t bear it.

There’ll be such pain when his claws pierce and rip her. Let it be quick. ‘Get. _Off_ her.’

He snorts like a horse as his eyes open, ah! His eyes so red. All red. His lips and teeth come away red and his tongue leaves Agatha’s skin last of all, with a trail of thick red spittle. His smile all bloody. His apology so bloody insincere.

Mina prays her skin won’t touch any part of him while she pulls Agatha that little bit towards herself, he lets her do it. The Sister feels so thin. She can feel the bones beneath the habit and flesh, easy. Is he drinking her life and youth as he did with Johnny? But he doesn’t look any younger. This seems to be as young as he’ll ever be.

She won’t let him hurt Agatha any longer.

He knows how to cut her open so easily. Johnny. He’ll break Johnny to punish them both. Johnny will have the worst of it, for he can’t die. She should have shown mercy and killed her blue-eyed Johnny. She should have run or let Dracula drink her up, rather than let him keep her in a box and drag her out to writhe on his hook.

Let this hurt him. Please let it work. Let him scream.

He strikes at her fingers. The candles, off the bed, Agatha, hold Agatha close, candles fell on the floor, grab them and as he stands up on the bunk ready to leap, make it, hold the cross.

Growling. The monster presses back against the wall and hunches under the low ceiling. His arms spread and bend like wings. Agatha is very heavy on her ribs.

Mina waits and waits for him to stop baring his teeth, give her a ‘just fooling’ smile and pounce on them. The last thing she sees is those fangs.

He moves to the far edge of the bunk. He’s very precise in getting down to the floor and walking to the outermost edge of the circle; she turns over nearly onto her side to keep him in sight and nearly tips Agatha off her too. She wriggles and writhes. She presses Agatha’s head between her arms and lifts her, fancy if her head might pop off like a doll’s! Somehow through all of it she never lets the candles part. She ends with her back up against the side of the bunk and she can hold Agatha safe in her lap. The Sister’s head on her breast. She can rest her arms a little and still hold the cross that still appears to be working. Hold it steady.

‘Really, such a ridiculous fuss.’ He is Agatha. Silly, where did that come from? Rather he _sounds_ like Agatha, as if he were a puppet and the Sister were speaking through him. ‘It is not as if it is the first or even second time, that her veins have appeased my thirst.’

Mina would take Agatha’s wrist in her hands and scrub it raw to get rid of his foulness, if only she could put the candles down. _Appeased,_ **_ugh._**

‘I was enjoying a most pleasant conversation indeed with the Sister, before you so rudely interrupted us.’ He seems to shut his eyes and he does shake his head. ‘Very rude of you.’ An English accent once more. The accent he drank from Johnny, which is worse. Oh, which is worse?

Mina finds her mouth wet enough to say ‘It didn’t sound as if it was pleasant.’ Agatha is drooling on her. It’s soaking right through her blouse to the skin. A strange reversal of fortune, hoping that she’s still asleep; if all this did finally wake her and all she’s capable of is drooling, they’re truly doomed.

‘A very clever idea with the candles.’ His fingers uncurl to her, as if he’s beckoning her to rise and come to him. ‘Did you ask Sokolov for them?’

That must probably be the man who came in with the evening meal and the lamp oil, looking concerned about the Sister, but not enough to stay or even speak. Could be a willing servant of him, could be an ally, so. Don’t try to get him in trouble: ‘No. He brought them by himself.’

‘Thoughtful man.’ The beast crouches down with his arms resting on his knees. ‘The problem with this game is that, inevitably, your arms _will_ get tired. How long do you think you can hold that little cross against me?’

‘We’ll have to see, won’t we.’ If it makes her look weak, well, what if she still learns something that can possibly help? ‘How did you get past the circle?’

He looks up from – what must have been Agatha’s hair and what he can spy of Agatha’s face. He stands with a grunt of effort as if he were actually a man; looking down to, _upon_ , there’s a great difference. Down _upon_ her crosses that took so long to draw. So much blood squeezed from Agatha’s veil.

She fancies he’ll smile and do something cruel like scraping his foot and scuffing one of them, but no, he doesn’t. ‘I do applaud your efforts, Mina. A shame it was all for nothing. Friendly word of advice; _don’t_ use my only form of sustenance as paint.’

Oh. Oh such an idiot. Little fool. Don’t let him! Give him nothing! She presses her back teeth together hard enough to ache.

‘I _would_ say better luck next time, but then, you’re not going to do this again.’

Mina shifts so that Agatha rests easier against her breast. She is most definitely going to do this again. Let him try to lick away crosses _scratched_ into the floor! If only Sokolov brings her a knife! And yet she needs to be trying to find more ways out of the room instead of merely trying to stop him coming in here. Agatha, damn you, wake up! I need you!

‘Do you even want to see Johnny again?’ Now he moves over to her left, so she must shift about to keep the cross on him. Agatha is getting very heavy, she’ll slip. ‘Because, if you keep this up, I honestly don’t feel it’d be safe to have the two of you in the same room. He’d wind up with a chair leg in his chest this time. He’s already suffered enough heart break.’

‘I would _never.’_ Except that she should have harmed him. If she truly loves him she should have killed him. Think what Agatha would say at this moment. She doomed Johnny by refusing to harm him.

‘No,’ he agrees with her and with a smile, ‘you wouldn’t. Which is why we’re here. I really am most _awfully_ grateful. Your tender heart couldn’t let you drive a stake through Johnny’s, so I still have my bride. And the makings of another.’ He’s looking at Agatha again. Agatha. _She_ would surely advise caution. The beast’s clearly trying to rile her and get her to make a mistake. Candles. Keep them together.

‘He is _not_ yours.’

Now he moves to her right, makes her move with him. Her arms are starting to shake from this position. ‘He’s no longer yours, either. You can’t hold onto him, Mina. He’s bound for a higher calling than a partnership with a law firm and a semi-detached in the suburbs.’ He stops very near to the end of the bunk, where he first climbed down. She leans against the bunk’s side to at least rest her right arm. It’s relief, it’s seductive, careful.

He shows her his palms and shrugs. ‘If you keep denying me Agatha, I’ll just have to turn to Johnny for company and solace during the long nights. Console him in his grief, give him a shoulder to cry on.’

Evil, evil. What a trade. Agatha for Johnny. What can the beast do to Johnny that he hasn’t done already? _Console him._ Don’t think of _that!_ Agatha is still alive and there’s hope for her but there’s hope for Johnny. She can’t. What if the monster works something over him so that he forgets her again, after they’ve just found each other! To have him look at her and not know her. She can’t bear it again.

‘Just _don’t_ try to keep me out with scrawling on the floor. Even if I can’t cross whatever barriers you make next, I won’t need to. You remember, when I fed those wolves?’

Those screams. Even with her ears stopped up. Tearing flesh. Calling to God who didn’t answer.

‘Admittedly no wolves on this ship, but there _is_ an abundance of something else.’ He turns his right palm to face the floorboards. Makes a half circle with it, as if it’s some prearranged signal. _‘Rats._ And rats can be very hungry little beasts.’

He couldn’t. The bat that broke into the convent clawing at her forehead and face, it hated her. Wanted to hurt her. She just thinks of it and the pain returns hard. The candles nearly slip past each other.

‘What if, Mina dearest, I took away their fear of men, or _woman_ in this case, and let them know there’s a tender plump morsel waiting for them in cabin number 9?’

He could and would. She hears them. Rustles and chitters far off. She feels scratching on her breast. No. Only Agatha’s hair tickling her.

‘Now, I’m sure you could fight off two or three vermin, however eager they were for a piece of you. But twenty? Thirty? Mina, you think my bite so terrible. What about a multitude of little mouths tearing and ripping, _all over you?’_

Scuttling beneath her. _Behind_ her head in the bunk. Claws shaking and scratching at the wood to get to her blood. Sharp teeth buried in the web of her thumb and ripping her cheek. If she thinks of anything but Agatha in her arms and Johnny wherever the monster’s hidden him, the candles will fall and he’ll be on her to bite out her life.

Keep her sights on him, keep his face in the top left-hand corner of the cross, she thinks of what Agatha would do and doesn’t look him in the eye. Focus on his cheek. Be bold but not too bold. There’s not enough air, think about it later.

He moves to the middle of the circle edge. ‘Or I suppose, I could have them eat you from the inside out and leave me your skin. I _could_ wear you, Mina. I could wear you as a treat for Johnny. He’d have such a surprise when the mask came off.’

Pain comes more and more from staying still. She has to blink hard when the wet trickles into her eyes. It comes from too high up to be a tear, so only sweat. What does it _matter_ so long as she doesn’t start weeping in front of this monster?

His cheek curves. Smiling again. The corner of her cross is trembling so, one candle strays onto his face. She locks her elbows hard to hold steady. No rats, nothing but the candles and Johnny and Agatha. Anything else and she’s lost.

‘I think we understand each other, Miss Mina. You must get some more rest before the night is done. You’ve had such a busy few days.’

The rats are settling down for the night. The rustles going away. She looks only at his forehead. Nothing else.

‘No more of this nonsense on the morrow? And if you behave, tomorrow evening I’ll let you see Johnny.’

Johnny, Johnny Johnny. He’s lying.

‘He’s been longing to see you as well, Mina. The _very_ first thing he asked when I woke him up this afternoon was where you were, and if you were all right. Let’s not disappoint him. Shall we?’

He steps backwards through her useless circle with a hand to where his heart would be, as if he were taking his leave at a party. He seems to be assessing her. Judging, deciding. A sweating terror of rats that might or might not be here, oh, that’s nothing to the weight of his interest. How did Johnny not go mad from it? How does Agatha stand it without screaming and tearing herself apart? To be his meal or his pet is a horror. To be something higher than that, worthy of _whatever_ he’s doing to Agatha!

‘Sleep well, Mina.’ He looks down toward the Sister once more as he comes to the door. He’s still looking upon her as he seems to grow somehow flat, as if he were a coloured drawing but still on paper, and he’s passing through the crack between door and frame where she could surely barely fit a knife blade, he’s gone.

Agatha would scold her for putting down the cross when she thinks the danger is fully gone. _Think_ , girl! He might be trying to trick her and come back for them both when she’s off her guard.

Mina holds the candles together though her arms feel like they might snap. Her back running with sweat and the Sister sliding further and further down until she’s lying across Mina’s lap. She never wakes.

Agatha can’t be on the floor, she’ll be hurt from the way she’s lying, oh and her poor wrist. The candles can go down for a moment. Just while Agatha goes back to bed. She’s so heavy. When she fell from the bunk, did she hit her head? She landed full on Mina and she didn’t touch the floor, surely. Her wrist. Is she still bleeding? There’s a scar just under the ball of the thumb but it’s long closed, as if it had been made a few days ago.

Observe, Mina. List what has happened. Remember. Store it for later.

While she pulls Sister Agatha up to rest her against the side of the bunk: Dracula still appears to fear the cross, but it seems he can overcome that fear should said cross be made from blood. Foolish, foolish.

As she drags Agatha back onto the bunk, lifts her legs up, she reminds herself: he can take on the traits of his victims, including their language and accents.

Checking under Agatha’s skirts to see if, yes, she’s leaking through her swaddling and needs to be sponged down: he can apparently speak to the people he feeds from, in their dreams.

Fetching the last of the water and some fresh rags: he can pass through minute spaces. Presumably the ship is open to all passengers, so no need for an invitation to any part of it.

Bathing Agatha’s forehead and wiping away her drool: he can command animals, vermin as well as wolves. She pulls her feet up from the floor and into the bunk so nothing can _scuttle_ past her ankles.

Now, as she wipes at the soaked drawers with the rag: the beast will let her see Jonathan tomorrow. If she behaves. If she does nothing but sit by Agatha and spoon soup into her and make sure she doesn’t choke.

As she wrings out the rag and rubs further at Agatha’s thighs and between them: Johnny will be here. What form will he take? Will he remember her this time? He’s asked for her. He has. Could be lies, could be truth. But the chance to see Johnny!

Stuffing more rags into Agatha’s drawers for the next time she pisses herself: Dracula now appears to be interested by her. She presses her face into Agatha’s stomach to swallow her howl.

Drawing Agatha’s skirts back down and seeing how dirty they’re getting: there surely can’t be much blood left in her.

Pulling the covers up around Agatha and placing her hands atop them with their bloody black nails: Jonathan might be hungry, come tomorrow evening.

Sitting back against the wall where the beast lately crouched, her stomach filling with cold, she’s completely sodden from all that and so very tired: Dracula loves the thought of _consoling_ Johnny. And Johnny doesn’t fear the cross.


	6. Jonathan II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning, for some non-consensual touching which Johnny accepts in his current state, but definitely wouldn't enjoy or tolerate if he were 'awake'.

_Come dance with me._ And then there was light.

Valeria tugs him onto the dance floor; _where are we,_ he asks her and oh, ask and you shall receive. Her joyous agonising eighteenth birthday celebration. It’s where the Count’s pinned her, like a butterfly specimen in a cabinet. This is where she’ll be found forever after. An ever-fixed mark.

Poor _poor_ girl. He throws his arms about Valeria. She politely bears the embrace and then arranges his hands about her, the better for their waltz. He says _I am sorry._ She has to know that. For the presumption and for drinking her, even under force, and for what she’s been brought to.

_As am I,_ though she doesn’t seem at all distraught about it? She adds _, for you, I meant. My troubles are over. I fear that yours will multiply._

They turn and turn about the floor and see, over there! The Court splendid in his evening dress, smiling in that doting way that makes waking Jonathan sick. The smile that Valeria gives her murderer in return! She turns back to give _him_ her dimpled grin where the Count only got a smooth curl of her lips. It’s warming that she likes him and wishes to give more of herself.

_I find I cannot hate him. He could have trapped me as I was when I was alive, in my age and poverty and regrets. Instead he gives me the night when all the world seemed to be_ just _for me, and I thought I was immortal! And he gives me my mother again._

Turn and turn about and he sees the mother so very like her daughter, watching them, just as doting as the Count. And as lifelessly as if she were a marble bust or a painting on the wall. Perhaps it’s only when she’s spoken to that she even comes to life; otherwise she waits for her cue to properly exist.

_But. He killed her._

_That is true. But now she lives in him as well. We have spoken, she and I._

Jonathan finds that hard to believe. Surely the Count can’t retain _every_ life that he’s stolen inside of him, indefinitely. He’d go mad. _More_ mad. And yet who is _he_ to rob Valeria of her comforting delusion?

Or is _she_ the delusion? Is this beauty in his arms really some fragment of the true Valeria, or just an echo she left behind as she was cast into the dark? An impression of a head left on a pillow in the morning, or a footprint on grass that’ll soon fade and be lost?

How real is the Jonathan that’s here in the fleeting memory of a dead woman; how much an echo of the living Jonathan Harker? Is he, too, simply the last echoes of the man? The ghost inside Harker’s body?

_May I cut in?_

Valeria gives way as if it’s merely part of the dance, so Jonathan fancies the Count’s generous enough to spin her another partner at once. She whisks away into the corners and shadows.

Nails feel sharp even here and they dig in the small of Jonathan’s back; the Count folds Jonathan’s right hand in half inside his own, gentle as can be. He pulls them about so swift Jonathan has to grab for a hold on the man’s arm and seizes his shoulder.

_Is this Valeria’s memory? Or am I dreaming?_

_Just her memory._ At his word the floor’s peopled with many faceless couples. _Which is now our playroom._

He’d thought of a specimen, he should have remembered from the cellar and the boxes, **toys**. _Oh god, she’s_ dead _, why can’t you leave her in peace?_

_Good grief, Johnny, you make it sound as if I’m spitting her on a_ pike _whenever you’re not watching. Does she look like she’s having such an awful time? I’d say lovely Valeria does a lot better in my care than she would in all the afterlives the Christian religion has dreamt up for her._

So, what afterlife can Jonathan possibly hope for? What heaven or hell?

He asks even though he imagines it will be no, _Can I even dream any longer?_

_Do you know, in all my experiments, I’ve never thought to test that? All my previous brides complained quite vigorously of not being able to sleep; they never got around to whinging about their dreams._ The Count pulls him so close for this whisper. _I can’t wait to see what dreams might come for you._

He pushes away and the Count only pulls him all the tighter. _Can_ you _dream?_

Dracula purses his lips in thought. _Sometimes when I rest – not sleep, you understand – I see things that no one I’ve drunk from could ever have witnessed. They could be memories from the days of my life, or just my brain playacting. Impossible to tell. Might be that I’ve drunk so many. What passes for my soul is too full for any of my own thoughts, when I lie back in my bed._

All of a sudden there’s a wall at Jonathan’s back when they were just in the middle of the floor. The Count’s close enough that he can feel that strange medal pressing into his breast, close enough that in the waking rational world each of them would feel the other’s heartbeat.

Even in delusions, it’s most unfair how Dracula towers over him. Delightful when the Count sees something over Jonathan’s shoulder that stops that wretched smiling. A switch at once so Dracula is resting his own head and back against the mirror and Jonathan has the ballroom behind him. He could break and run, save for those nails in his spine creeping and turning into an arm around his waist, pulling him full against the sheer mass of this towering body.

What did the Count even see, what could _possibly_ annoy him in a space he utterly controls? He tries for a peek and gets a hand tight about the jaw for his trouble. _Keep your eyes on_ me, _Johnny. I’m your sun from this point on._

Every moment Dracula’s hand on him is a risk, run, run! _You_ greatly _overestimate your charms._

Dracula laughs and it shakes through them both. _When we get to England, I will take you dancing. **Every** night. We’ll have our pick of partners._

_I rather doubt that._ Think of the two of them waltzing together in polite circles. The stare and whispers, hatred. Think of Count Dracula arrested by the police for public indecency. Or rather an attempted arrest ending in carnage. Whatever the outcome, hardly something to anticipate.

Johnny _. You’re still so small minded. You think just because your country’s laws mean to geld and splay all the youth of their empire, they’ll buckle under? No; they’ll go to it._

Where. Where does he know that from? Dracula takes up Jonathan’s right hand as though they’re still in that waltz. He might truly crush it this time. But no, he bares the wrist and lifts it to smell the flesh exposed between the glove and shirt cuff.

There should be outrage. Disgust. Lord, his lips feel good. Even when the Count takes his left hand and presses it against a chest without a heartbeat, then lower and lower, there’s no more urge to pull away. Through the cloth Dracula feels quite massive to match the rest of him. Still soft.

He worries how he isn’t worried.

Think of Mina. He looks over the Count’s shoulder now he’s too preoccupied, look to the mirror. Think of her face in the mirror. All he can muster is golden hair and blood. The monster won’t let him remember her face.

Fine. Then what would she _say_ to the sight of him being kissed and pawed over by the thing that killed him and ruined their happines? Of Jonathan being made to caress him in return? What would she feel, what would she scream? Away, Johnny, run away!

The Count leaves off his wrist to scold. _Johnny, what did I say?_

_Why can’t you give me, just, the illusion of her? Just let me see her face!_

_The thought has occurred, but I’m honestly fed up to the back teeth with Mina Murray tonight._

Golden hair blood a screaming mouth that’s all he can see _Mina Mina Mina_

_Oh, do please_ calm yourself. _I haven’t touched her. Which is not to say she hasn’t been_ harmed _, but she is such a stubborn little thing._

**_what did you do_ **

_Hush, Johnny._

His right hand’s freed as those terrible fingers reach past his waistcoat and down. Somewhere along the way the Count’s glove has vanished. Jonathan feels the hairs on the wrist brushing his stomach, fingernails tracing and stroking in what little space there is. The nails at his back creep lower beneath the tails of his coat, to press him forward. The spot between his leg and groin makes itself sharply sweetly known.

He clings to the Count’s shoulder from the softness of it all. Wonderful. Horrifying. The cruel strength in these hands and the damage they do. If the Count squeezed hard enough with those claws he’d pierce his flesh like a rotten apple, it’s mad. Madness. Stroking him like a lover and he’s standing here letting him. Push him away, run Johnny! How are his hands resting so loosely near the Count’s neck? Savour him or strangle him but do something!

He chooses to struggle. _I’ll wager you didn’t do this with Valeria._

_Alas, no. More’s the pity,_

fingers wrap tight about him

_it would have been_ far _more interesting and memorable a gift than a pineapple. Though her_ mother _did make such delightful noises when I had her later._

Run, Johnny! Where to run exactly, Mina? Dracula holds him by his backside and his cock and if he tries to get away the Count would happily rip them both off. One nail ready at the tip of him to split it all down to the root, even in a dream or a delusion Dracula would make certain that it hurts.

The threat of that nail goes away and the gentle pad of his thumb is stroking around and about and around. It’s soft, those fingertips are so soft. God, even Mina’s hand was not so soft.

_Would you truly prefer if Mina was here with us? I could wear her, you know, Johnny. Would you like that?_

**_God_** _, no._ Mina can’t be here, the Count will see her and want her, and she’ll _see._

_Then you’ll have to take me as I am._ Dracula bows his head to say soft into the hollow of his throat, _Do be gentle with me._

**_Be nothing of the sort, Mr. Harker_** she says as she steps from nowhere on his right, all in blue with her hair all about her face. Mina? Or rather Sister Van Helsing, _Sister Van Helsing?_ **_Be as cruel as you please._** **_Turnabout is fair play._**

He’s sure a fang scratches his cheek as Dracula snaps about to look at her. He howls like a wolf; Agatha flinches and flickers out, as Valeria did when the Count forced her down his throat.

It seems Agatha isn’t expected here, saying such words. Not according to his design. Interesting.

That hand around him squeezes tight. That grip returns to hold him by his neck, like hoisting a puppy or a kitten. Those lips fasten back on the corners of his mouth. At least no blood this time, no feeding.

_Call it feeding if you like, Johnny, you know what it is._

In the waking world Dracula’s lips must be dry as a corpse and slick with the blood he spat into Jonathan. Here they’re tender as his fingers. There’s a stroke and a taste of his own tongue suddenly existing and heaving inside his make-believe mouth. There are fingers pressing and carding in his hair and one thumb tracing his cheek. A scratch running up and down the length of him and the other thumb circling, pressing, caressing once more. Heat. Pleasure.

Turn about to give up his neck to that kiss, turn about to where Agatha stood and

Valeria with the tear in her neck pouring blood down her breast and arm to fill her glass, she holds it overflowing out to him as an offering

pull free from those lips to turn about and there’s

himself, the Jonathan who slept on that first night in Castle Dracula and is now only memory stored inside the Count, eyes so shocked, hand to his throat but can’t stop the tide, blood, he is blood

turn about and Dracula’s hands which _haven’t_ yet ripped his groin open but are reaching for the sides of his head

the light goes out. He doesn’t wake for that wasn’t a dream, rather he surfaces into nightmare. The sides of his box give no room for him to grab at Dracula’s hands about his face, nails piercing, blood.

‘Why, why _why?’_

‘Because I promised Mina that I would. Thank or blame her. Whichever you prefer,’ just as he

**_crushes_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, on 'Where's Dracula quoting from': Measure for Measure!
> 
> POMPEY
> 
> Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?
> 
> ESCALUS
> 
> No, Pompey.
> 
> POMPEY
> 
> Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to’t then.
> 
> ***
> 
> Writing erotic stuff is hard. Writing erotic dreams is harder.
> 
> *squints at the next chapter*
> 
> Aw DAMMIT.


	7. Agatha II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fine tooth comb treatment for this over the next few days...
> 
> For now; we haven't heard from Agatha in a while; turns out she needed to be brought up to speed on a hell of a lot as well....

The moon rising behind them turns her shadow into a wizened creature that capers at every step. Borrowing Abraham’s clothes was so clever at the start of tonight; unlikely to be recognised, easier to dig and to run (should there be any running) than in skirts. That urge for speed has come far too early, she feels observed and exposed. She wants to turn her back on her shadow and whatever he’s taking her to and march right back to the world of the living.

There’s an urge as well to bend double and dart between the gravestones. Ridiculous. Anything watching would be drawn by _that_ far more than their stroll down the middle of the avenue between the graves. Two gravediggers making the rounds of the burying ground at night. Nothing strange whatsoever about it!

They reach a mausoleum that’s big enough to hide them from most viewpoints; the assistant gravedigger sets the lantern down and seats himself. He stretches out his legs and nearly kicks a gravestone with his left foot. _We’ll wait here for a stretch. She still hasn’t started._

She nearly sits right by his side before she thinks: she should do this sooner rather than later. To clear their heads and bodies, and if there shouldn’t be a _later_ for one of them. And she wants! Going down on one knee she takes him by the cheeks and about the ears, between her hands she kisses his open mouth and gets a touch of his tongue.

_Truly? In a_ graveyard, _Agatha?_ As if he hadn’t been dying for this!

She pushes on that knee to swing over his lap as if she were mounting a donkey and settle down snug, before he can reach to try and unfasten himself. She wriggles so that he groans. _Wait,_ he says, _wait, I’m not ready._

_Ready as you need to be._

_Just. Just let me._ He pulls at the trousers, his and hers.

_No._ She holds his wrist to move him away.

_I need to be in you._

_Not this time._

_Agatha, you’re cruel!_

_No._ But. She moves his hands up to the neck of her brother’s shirt, to where her corset and shift are still hidden underneath. He fumbles, roots, lifts out a breast to lick and nurse. His hair between her fingers so dry and soft like a cat’s fur. Seems to her it should be longer, tangled, a lighter hue even in this half light? But. This is better.

_Let me in,_ between his mouthfuls and sighs, _please. Agatha. Let me in._

_No,_ _but._ She wants to learn! _I can’t. But._ She reaches to test how hard he is beneath her. He beats her to his prick first and she goes _right_ up on her knees to get out of his reach. Her breast pulls out of his mouth. He can’t come in. But. _Show me what you like._

She’d worried about his hands touching her, grave dirt under the nails and calluses from the spade. When he makes it through Abraham’s trousers and her own drawers, oh, soft, nails smooth and they don’t catch and snag on her lips. He takes her fingers and shows her how to hold and stroke him, grasp and rub harder up and down: _just_ _like petting a well-behaved cat,_ his smile quite sharp. She sits back down on his stroking tracing curling fingers.

She has to kiss him. She holds his chin hard to ready him, he tries to break away and return to her breasts but, she will have this too. She tries for his tongue again. He smiles harder against her lips, now he won’t let her in. His teeth are sharp they bite ow

**_ow_ **

Where’d the sex go? When did they, why are they crouching by the mausoleum’s doors? He rests his hand on the metal and beckons her to do the same.

_Interred only this morning. Just listen!_

She hears nothing, and nothing, then it finally threads through the door to her ear. A voice from further away than just inside the small structure. A voice scraped raw. It should have cracked and snapped long ago. Somehow, impossibly, horrendously, it’s still going! It husks, it gurgles, it scratches. It wants God and help and to be let out.

Just opposite her so she’s looking him full in the face, the gravedigger’s so calm. The sound, whatever might be making it, not even a surprise or horror to him any longer. That is worst of all _. I think she’s been wailing since the moment we buried her. She must have won back control of her body_ right _after the funeral ended; too late to do anything but scream and weep and batter on the coffin lid._

His hand comes up to rest on the door; now past his fingers she only sees one of his eyes, half his nose and mouth. She thinks again of a nursing baby while the eye closes to drink in that sound. He sighs in contentment. _Soon there’ll be nothing left of her voice. They can’t heal damage to themselves._

_And she’ll keep crying for help anyway?_ Her own hand is on the door now, fingers curled so she might beat at the metal. Or at him. Or bite on her own fingers so she doesn’t start to scream. She could stretch her smallest finger to meet his.

_Yes._

_And you’ll leave her in there?_

_Yes._

**_Why?_ **

_What else can we do?_ His smallest finger stretches to meet hers. _Nothing kills them. They’re already dead. We could dig them up or prise them out of their tombs. What then? Send them back to their families and friends?_ He lowers his hand to move himself closer to her, closer. _You think they’ll be glad to see them? You think the priest would want his flock to see a_ true _resurrection of the dead, rather than the one he’s always preaching?_

_The priest knows about this?_ But of course, he knows.

_He knows enough._ How did he come to be behind her? His arm about her waist, he has her up and away from the door and resting back against his chest, his knees. Should she mind this?

_And truly, nothing kills them?_ She strains over him nipping at her ear like a horse with feed, to still hear the dead woman’s cries.

_Well. I hear there are ways. But they’re not pleasant,_ stroking the space between her breasts, a finger going beneath the corset. _A stake in the heart stops them moving right enough, but who knows if it truly puts them to rest? They might still be in there, only trapped inside their own skulls until Judgement day. If that even comes._

Horrendous. Terrifying. Confusing. She must find out more. To help them find peace and stop it happening to any other innocent soul.

_Rather to gratify your own ego, Agatha!_

Something bangs very hard on the other side of that metal door

_oh, it seems she really_ was _desperate to get out_

something looks through the mausoleum window.

Mess of hair. Wide eye quivering. Glazed and drying, how does it see her?

Mad. She was buried still aware, clawed her way out while screaming all the way, a wretched second birth. Of course she is mad.

No light. No lantern or the moon. Even there in a sudden clawing dark is that staring eye, the chattering teeth, the door bangs and bangs _open_ against her knee.

Running. Back down the moonlight avenue between the gravestones as tiny stones slip underfoot. It follows. This voice has shrunk and rotted but still **but still,** _run, run._

It’s so silly. This didn’t happen. Something is wrong, all is wrong and how does escaping the graveyard stop it? The entrance so very far ahead.

_This didn’t happen_ even as it pulls her back to grab her throat _this didn’t happen_

* * *

She lands. Weight, sore.

Above. Circle of wooden ceiling. Quavers and flickers in the black. Right at the edges, Mina. Looking down upon her from a long way off. Turn her cheek into whatever’s beneath her. Dark should suck her back down.

Weight from above. Her chest. Pulls her right back out of the gentle dark. Tiny sounds, such a battle they are! Mina, Mina! Crushing me!

Hands cupping. Cradling about her face. ‘I thought you’d never wake up.’ Arm behind her shoulders pulling up. Up! Another arm strains across her breasts, the two of meet to pull tight, **_arg_** _._ Pain scorches through her bones.

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ She’s set down. A soft thing behind her head and shoulders. Better. Better. Her head falls with her face to her left so she can see, Mina. Hurts very too much for a dream. Real, and Mina here. A worse nightmare. ‘I didn’t think that you would ever wake. You slept through everything that he did to you. I even thought for a while, that he’d killed your mind but left your body alive and breathing. Just to continue to make more blood for him.’

Interesting, horrifying thought. Has Dracula tried such a thing? Among the myriad of tortures that Mr. Harker discovered.

‘What. Did he do?’ Her hair is free and traps the sweat at the back of her neck. Her mouth’s clogged with sour; trying to swallow just makes a greater clog in her throat as it won’t go down. She spits it back up. She twists to the edge of the bunk in order to spit again on the boards below and Mina comes right in to dab the traces away, before she’s even lain back down. The spit never got down her throat so the insides stick to themselves during a swallow.

‘He’s fed off you. At least twice since he brought us here. When he came in here the first time, he was licking the cut that you made on your hand, like a dog. Then he bit you in the neck again.’

She has to see. Needs to. Ah, her cut is far more healed than a few days could manage. As if it were made a week ago. He seized even that triumph from her in order to rub his tongue all over it. Marking his territory. She puts that marked hand to her neck; thus, old scar meets old scar. Hurts.

Mina brings a tin mug and a plate. ‘Last night he came in while I was asleep. I woke up and he was drinking right from your other wrist.’ The mug comes to her lips shaking, it dribbles water cool on neck and breast ‘I’d tried to stop him getting at your neck again, but he simply chose a different spot to suckle from.’

Swallow down the water that takes the sour and sticking cloying with it, swallow until her throat unfolds and her voice comes back so she can demand. ‘Mina, why didn’t you run?’ Here she lies in what feels like her own filth and dregs, while Mina didn’t run. She could bite her, she could get her by the neck and shake her like a puppy, tear her open. She could spit again. 

Mina must see that urge to bite. And still she doesn’t run, let alone sit back from the bunk. ‘I couldn’t leave you, to him. I couldn’t.’

Closing her eyes keeps her head from pounding so much. Really, Mina couldn’t. And she wanted to hurt this woman? Mina didn’t run away and leave her, and she’s so ungenerous she wanted to hurt her for it! Such bravery. Foolish. Mina stayed. Agatha would kiss her now if only she could be sure it was her own thought. She tests that fantasy of biting into Mina’s neck and feels her stomach shift in displeasure, good.

Or. No. A good deal of shifting outside her stomach. And she is after all in a bunk, a wooden room over Mina’s shoulder. ‘We are. On the sea?’

‘Don’t speak any more, until you’ve eaten. I was so worried you weren’t getting any food. I could hardly get you to drink for fear I’d drown you.’ Mina soaks the piece of bread in the gruel and holds it out so close to Agatha’s lips, there’s no need to strain her neck out to take it. Lying in her filth and the black, there was a dream of that pretty priest holding out the Host for her tongue. Hasn’t thought of him in _years._ The one she longed to bite.

The pull to kiss Mina remains. Some nudging from Dracula’s teeth in her flesh, or left-over desire from those dreams his bite gave her? Or simply the urge she always feels when someone she likes is very close to her? She’ll need to crush it dead. No more kisses. Who knows what’s brewing in her mouth after all Dracula’s attentions?

‘We’re certainly headed for England, just as he planned. Johnny’s somewhere on the boat as well. Or so he claims.’ Mina rests her fingers in the bowl while she recites the list. ‘We’re locked in here. I’ve tried making all sorts of noise several times, but no one ever seems to hear it. There is one man who comes to brings meals I think he’s Russian but he has some English. He’s only in and out for a moment.’

She pinches the bread so hard it squashes into something formless, gruel dripping down her fingers. ‘And that beast comes and goes as he pleases. I tried to keep him out, but it didn’t work.’ Her eyes don’t see Agatha, which is good because whoever she’s picturing right now, she hates him so. The woman should have run.

Agatha’s hand is clammy and she doesn’t trust the pains in her fingertips. Regardless, she needs to touch Mina. The girl needs a friend’s hand while there still is one. ‘Mina, has he harmed you?’

‘Not in body. I almost wish that he had. He threatened to set _rats_ on me. The same way that he did with the bats, and the wolves. Agatha. I was so afraid.’

‘What did you try?’ She can hold Mina’s hand in her own but she can’t bring it to her lips. She can’t embrace her without some pain, which brews guilt and takes all the purpose out of comforting her. What comfort can she possibly give? She gave her neck to Dracula to protect Mina and she has nothing left to bargain with. She made a deal and Dracula isn’t sticking to it, the bastard.

‘I thought of what you did, with the wafer.’ Mina turns half away to gesture. Raising up on an elbow and squinting, she can _just_ see the shapes on the floor. Crosses in a circle about the bunk, dried brown hardly standing out against the boards. I thought I could make it work here, but it didn’t stop him. Because I used blood, and he licked it up.’ As an excuse, asking for forgiveness, ‘It was all I had.’

‘It was a worthy try, Mina. You’ve learned from it.’ Perhaps it was not quite _all_ that Mina had had for paint, particularly when her own full bladder and bowels are announcing themselves quite sharply. Swallow that thought right back up.

‘I doubt it.’ Mina slips another piece of bread onto her tongue, a sip of water to chase it all down. ‘But he does still seem to fear the cross, if it isn’t made of blood. I made one out of two candles and I thought it held him off. He stayed far away from them, wouldn’t come near. That was when he brought up the rats.’

‘You _thought_ you held him?’

Mina looks down at the plate and the dregs in her lap. ‘I thought. That he might just be playing with me. Making me believe that I was… _we_ were safe. And then he would attack.’

She’ll hurt him for that. He’ll bleed. To toy with Mina so! Yet he does fear the cross. Why didn’t he set the rats on her as he threatened? He’s fully capable of it. And even before Mina thought to use the candles, he hasn’t touched her. Why? Perhaps from feeding from her and Harker so many times, Dracula’s somehow glutted himself on a desire to keep Mina safe? Is it worth testing to see if her blood has a soothing effect on him? Calm learned from _her_ blood would be a miracle.

She stretches up and though her flesh trills with pain, her hand makes it to Mina’s shoulder. More pain as she digs her nails in. ‘You are so brave, Mina. I am so sorry that I’ve brought you here, to this.’

‘ _I’m_ sorry that I can’t protect _you._ ’ She pushes Agatha back down. ‘He was hurting you, and I couldn’t stop it.’

‘There was harm, yes. There was pleasure too. I might think that he does it out of spite, to strike at my position as a, a bride of Christ.’ _Former_ bride. ‘But I do believe it’s simply a consequence of his bite. Pleasure to subdue his victim.’

Mina shocked and pitying. She doesn’t know if she wants that. It’s been a strange sort of violation. The tricks he’s played with her dream flesh she doesn’t mind so much. If he wants to amuse himself in their shared imaginations by frolicking with an aged nun, so be it. Fumbling and clutching by roaring fires or under a blood red sky, melodrama of the highest that even she never attempted awake or dreamed of.

What matters is what he might have twisted while he was in there.

He found and corrupted a time in the convent garden with Jadwiga, and a tryst in the graveyard with that assistant gravedigger, whatever was his name, back in her girlhood. Flicking through her life as if she were a book to search for the page that will give him all his answers. Her mind’s her treasure and he’s ravaged it. She will kill the Count. She must kill him.

To ensure that, they must go to work! ‘Tell me about the ship. What else have you learned?

‘There are other passengers. I believe he’s passing himself off as a gentleman, so he can travel among them. And pick them off.’

‘He feeds so openly?’

‘He’s killed at least two so far. Sokolov - the man who comes - he said the crew were looking for some missing people this morning.’

Two in one night! It might even be more than that. There was something he said in one of the scenes he wove for her. ‘And how long since we set sail?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Two people in one night? Such a _pig_ he is!’ Which makes Mina laugh, which makes her laugh, which hurts hellishly but it is good. Alas, kill that mirth. ‘And Mr. Harker?’

Mina is quite still.

‘He’s only tells me that he’s on board as well, and resting. I think he’s being passed off as a passenger too. I don’t know how he’s managed it.’

Her head pounds. Closing the eyes helps but, take care not to fall back into the black. ‘There was something I dreamed. He told me. That they had eaten before they embarked. Perhaps Jonathan has been given the role of some poor soul who bought passage for themselves, before they fell victim.’

‘He told you. He did say that I interrupted a conversation he was having with you.’

‘I remember we were conversing. We were playing a game. _Chess.’_ She recalls the chess board. Dracula on the other side, handsome winsome devil with his hair groomed and sleeves rolled up, leaning forward and entirely focused on her. No one has paid her so much attention in years. In her life! The memory of the weight of his stare focused wholly on her. She’s shocked by the prickle and throb starting between her legs. Her body making itself ready. Foolish thing.

Learn from this. The greatest thing she must fear is the flattery of the beast’s regard; that he might pretend to be enthralled by her, enough to bring her with him on this journey. Remember that he'll turn her inside out to find her secrets.

Mina’s voice comes low and thick. ‘If you did actually speak with him. His claim that they’d eaten. He’s made Johnny drink from someone?’

She doesn’t want to say. How many more times will she have to break a piece off this woman’s heart? ‘It’s probable.’ If Harker's is still 'alive' after the mess at the convent, it’s inevitable.

The bowl falls to the blanket while Mina’s head falls into her hands. Through the shelter of fingers, ‘Oh, I _hate_ him.’

There’s an instant where Mina Murray might shatter and scatter right in front of her. If Agatha says _anything_ at this moment it might be the killing blow. Mina must be the one to draw herself back together. Let her hate, they’ll need it soon enough, but bank the coals of it.

She looks to the ceiling to think: If he _is_ here, Harker’s going to be a problem. They’ll likely have to kill him as well. No stories of strigoi or moroi mention their hold on their past lives, save for Dracula. Him now, he thinks of Jonathan as his finest bride; will that make him a tender bridegroom, creating a true marriage?

So, what will Harker become under Dracula’s tutelage and firm hand, with a will of his own? Think of it and shiver. Two intelligent, reasoning vampires loose upon the world! Her head pounds one moment and squeezes the next. She must think of Dracula now and nothing else. Harker must wait, they can decide later.

Meanwhile Mina comes out of her hands. ‘We _have_ to help Johnny. And I want that beast dead.’

‘And yet, how can we do it?’ She wriggles the agonising path up the pillow so that she can see the far wall of her resting place. ‘We have no real proof. We are two women locked in a cabin, and I at least am quite filthy and no doubt look quite mad. If we manage to break out of here, who will believe us? We must have _proof.’_

‘Then.’ Mina rubs her eyes. Mopping up tears, or is it that she’s had no sleep after Dracula’s intrusion last night? She has too little and Agatha’s had far too much! ‘How can we prove it?’

Just thinking of how to fox the Count brings pleasure! ‘Dracula thinks he is so clever. But we shall have him, Mina. I saw at the gate; he has _no_ restraint. When he sees or smells blood he cannot help himself; he _must_ feed, though it harm and wreck his design.’

She reaches for Mina’s hand, it’s in hers at once. ‘He clearly wishes not to be exposed. He should have stayed down in the belly of the ship and travelled as cargo, but he so longs to be seen as a man! We shall simply make a moment where he _cannot_ hide his true nature, from all eyes on the ship. We shall expose him as a beast.’

‘Oh, quite simple.’ Mina sounds less than convinced, which is absolutely fair enough.

‘First, we must get out of this room.’

_‘First_ we need to make sure you won’t faint when you try to take a step. There’s some more bread.’

‘I think there is something more pressing even than bread.’

So Mina brings the pot; yet Agatha finds she has a little strength now to lift her hips so it can fit under her, part her drawers and so win back a little dignity. It’s no shame to have been wiped and swaddled by Mina, but it is nice to claw her way back out of infancy. Though it is also good to lie and have her face and neck sponged by that cool cloth, to be cared for and fed further bit by bit until the beast in her own stomach stops clawing.

‘When does this Sokolov man return?’

‘Not until this evening. This was luncheon that he brought us.’

And she surely can’t stay awake until then. Her eyes are already itching and trying to close. Every second breath a yawn. Dracula’s bloody venom! And the risk, should the beast come looking to refresh himself.

She’s thought on it while basking in Mina’s attention. She has to say it. It terrifies her and yet she can see no other way. ‘Mina, I will have to sleep again very soon.’

And there, there goes another piece of Mina’s heart. ‘No. You can’t.’

‘If he drinks from me again tonight, he will see that I woke. We _cannot_ let him know that we have had a chance to talk. If he thinks me dead to the world and you defeated then he believes he has won. He will grow careless, and we will trap him.’

‘You slept for three days; I don’t even know _how_ you managed to wake up this time. What if you never wake again?’

The thought has occurred. Courage. Faith.

‘He has plans for me,’ and does she think of Dracula or God? ‘He appears to search for something. He will not let me die until he’s found it. And he is so arrogant, I know that he will want me awake to gloat at me when the end comes.’

Mina takes her face between her hands again. ‘And what if he breaks you to find what he wants?’

Agatha can only reach up to cover one of Mina’s hands with one of her own. ‘He won’t.’ 

There’s a moment when she likely dozes, a prod in the arm pulls her out of the black. Mina has moved off her knees at last to sit full on the floor, her face very close to Agatha on the pillow. ‘He said he would bring Johnny to see me tonight.’

So. So, so. What will that mean for Mina? She’s clearly worked out the threat burrowed in that promise. ‘Did he say why?’

‘A reward, for if I behaved.’

Not precisely a punishment. A torture, but at least it’s one that the pair will likely survive. ‘And what do you feel about it?’

‘Agatha, I’m _afraid._ Johnny, he tried to attack me, he nearly drank my blood. He put a stake through his heart to save me from himself but now he seems to have survived it. I’m terrified that beast will be changing him. Into something wearing Jonathan’s skin and looking through his eyes, but it won’t be him.’

Another damnable yawn she cannot keep down, and Mina is yawning too! It’s infectious! She is somehow smiling. ‘Whatever else happens, at least I will know his fate. It was agony, not knowing.’

Now Agatha takes Mina in her arm and fuck the pain. ‘Everything that I can, Mina.’ Mina must live. Out of this whole horror, she has to live. ‘Now. What do we have? Sokolov. Do you think he is a servant of the Count?’

‘I’m not certain. But he does seem to be concerned about you. When he searched the cabin this morning he asked how you were doing. I don’t think he’d care so much if he _were_ his servant.’

There is the possibility that he might be, only he doesn’t want to risk his master’s prize dying under his watch. That clearly stated concern, though. Interesting. ‘Then he could be of use. The next time he comes in, ask if he can bring you a Bible.’ Mina’s hand stills in her hair. ‘There is no harm in such a request. We _must_ try to draw him to our side. If you can get him talking it will be a start.’

‘Does the Count fear the Bible as well?’

‘I do not know. But it is a theory that we shall test.’

Harder to plan for what Harker might fear. He’s a man who could have been a friend, and more a victim in all this than the two of them together. They shall have to depend on his being well fed and Dracula being too delighted by his toys to start breaking them.

‘We only have to survive to tomorrow, Mina. Then Sokolov. You can give me a good pinch when he comes in.’

Success! She laughs! Only then she hides her face in Agatha’s shoulder and neck, despite the stink. Brave girl. Mina, you pearl among women.

Her fingertips burn and the wounds where he suckled from her throb like a fever, can’t Mina feel it? There’s surely no happy way that this can end.

How lovely to lie here with Mina by her side, thinking of being back with Jadwiga in their cell in the first light of the morning; and even further back with that gravedigger, he of the long legs and gentle fingers, when she was still young.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basorexia: an overwhelming urge to kiss.
> 
> What's better than erotic dreams in a ballroom? Erotic dreams in a graveyard!!!
> 
> (spot where Dracula's leaking through in Agatha and she doesn't even know it)


	8. Dracula II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay on this chapter; I was travelling for much of last week, and Dracula was being a stubborn bugger and refusing to go where the chapter initially demanded.
> 
> Enough with the 'only four main characters'; time to introduce some other vict- I mean passengers! Feel free to get as attached as you please.

There might still be some living soul up on deck, but. No. Enough. Two is enough for this night.

_Two too many_ , Agatha says from inside. **_Hush_** , Agatha!

Perhaps he is still Agatha enough that he didn’t take matters any further with Johnny. Or perhaps _she_ fuelled his crushing need to break his bride’s head; she surely knows the dangers of an infant vampire with a will of his own, even subject to his tender mercies. She’d hate it and hate herself, but she’ll plot a way to kill Johnny along with him.

Something to smear all over Mina’s face when next he visits.

No further illicit midnight feasting. So, how to soothe the sobbing Johnny? And they can’t have him appearing on deck tomorrow looking like this!

Up, up Johnny comes out of the box and lolloping like, yes, a dead body. Must be careful of spillage and leaking with no launderer on board. Johnny’s head rests secure in the crook of Dracula’s arm to hold his skull together; his eyes are wild with the pain but they still see, and they hate him. A sign that his brains haven’t leaked out through his ears! Just a little drink and all shall be well.

Johnny wails as he has to press him to his breast while fighting with the bloody cufflink once again. Patience, lad. 

Finally! Flick of the nail and open the wrist, get the boy’s attention with the first droplets, he latches onto the gash, and look at him go! Johnny grabs the whole of his arm to pull himself closer and closer to the font, as if he were pulling himself up on a beam and out of deep water. He almost slips out of his embrace. Dracula bends his arm tighter to squeeze and hold Johnny about the neck. In each space between a gulp he can feel his bride’s head press out a little further and he remembers: like a flower blooming. Hopefully the top of his head won’t open to show his insides to the sun!

The clutching clawing frenzy passes. Johnny leaves off from drinking quite sated, stuffed. He’ll need a while to digest all that, which should allow for a wake up at eight tomorrow morning. Dracula’s eager to see what skin he’ll have grown by the morning.

And he, himself, should have a treat after all he’s had to endure today. The bunk’s siren call is even stronger than his boxes in the hold, besides which he’s not in the mood to make his way down there with Johnathan giving the game away with his groaning.

The lad’s as light in his arms as that last sunrise. Trembling. Tremors from the healing in his skull as he’s laid down and as Dracula lies down at his back. His fists curled under his chin as if he’s ready to charge into battle.

He tries for any last traces of the living boy’s scent, a test behind the ear. For now there’s only the smell of his black blood. Such a mess he’s made of his Johnny. He’ll kiss it better, he’ll lick him back into shape. He licks the crumbs of blood and crust from neck, ear, temple, hair.

How thin and delicate the skin on his forehead is, how thin the bones. Johnny’s skull is firm once more underhand and under lips. With his own superior blood rattling around that head to stop up and seal the cracks, the bone and skin shall be harder. Harder as well to administer chastisement in the future. He’ll have to get creative.

Johnny settles into some kind of rest. No flinching when he noses behind his ear a second time, or scratches at the scab on his brow, or puts an arm about his middle. Not lost in another memory either. Perhaps he too has found the glorious dark that staves off madness. The things all the other brides whinged for.

Strange to rest like this at night. So many hearts beating and he a passenger on the ship, he might go anywhere and into any cabin! _No self-control,_ Agatha accused him. Her judgement. A fine thing it will be when he lets her realise her true situation. See her righteousness turn to horror. Hilarious!

Four weeks to England will pass quickly enough. And such company! Lord Ruthven on the morrow, and perhaps his dark lover hidden in plain sight, and naturally his tender young bride. Johnny can have the lion’s share of her. Hopefully a chance to talk to Dr. Sharma, though Johnny and he must be kept at a distance. Take care around that man. A challenge to befriend him. His shock when he realises the truth at the end, it will be delightful. Almost as good as Agatha.

He really should plan for England, but what else is there left to account for? Going over his deeds and properties and the men he’s bought and owns body and soul, yet again. Tedious. Conquered with coin rather than the sword.

Now, through _blood_ he’s amassed quite a plunder. He’ll search through his latest bounties for his beloved! If only he had taken one last sip of Johnny from that evening, when she was so low in the sky, so red! The boy was on his knees before him with that sight fresh in his brain, and he didn’t take it! Until he feels the far off burn of his beloved again, he can search for her in his hoard.

So:

Valeria? Her days are spent in bitter rooms and chambers, hardly ever leaving her various homes during the day. If she did, she shielded herself from the light as surely as if she were already part of himself. True that there are picnics, drives excursions, but always they're under shades; only peeking out to see the sunlight. She never looked up or out to see sunsets or dawns.

Portmann? A constant feeling of burning, tight upon his skin and cooking his flesh. To look at it during work is idiotic, so only the feel of it. Not what Dracula wants at all!

Piotr? He walked on the docks, he too feared the heat of the sun – but he never looked up to _see!_ These people. Blessed beyond their reckoning, and they never so much as glance at her in order to give her thanks and praise. Ingrates. Worthless.

Almost forlorn, he asks, Agatha?

Why, here’s a joy! She’s opening a window in the convent, the same room where she teased the tale from Johnny. He’s here too, right at Dracula's back this time, and Miss Mina in her bizarre costume. But the _light!_ The darkness that Agatha notes is growing so fast, and the bright beside it! The beam of it that she lets into the little cell, she steps through it as if a shadow!

He tries to summon some semblance of his hand to catch her. Just let her touch him. But. But he was never truly here, in this room. It’s been too long. He can’t create the look of _her_ on his skin.

In the flesh his hand has moved as well. It’s crept under Johnny’s curled fist and rests upon the boy’s heart.

A thought; has he ever lain like this with another being? Living or dead. Not tussling or rutting or recovering in the aftermath of rutting, before the other party crept away to let him sleep. Simply lying with a person for no reason, save their closeness? Never with any of the other brides. They never found their way into the crack in his tomb, they lay across the stone like dogs. Perhaps never when he was a living man either.

He had a wife, more than one wife; though never, he was fairly certain, at the same time! Lovers and bed-warmers in a multitude. Had there ever been one that he had permitted to stay with him through the night or day?

Sentiment. He broke his toy; it needs to be mended. Is all. He slips down through the convent floor and the bunk beneath them and at the deepest depths of it all, his grave.

Shouts and calls pulling him back up from his resting place. Ah, the search begins. Up above _she_ beats and claws against the fog that will need to be topped up. _Forgive me, beloved, but I cannot let you in. You would destroy me._

Jonathan rests still in his arms. The blood’s done its work, his hair tickles. Dracula roots through the new crop to get to his scalp and the scent of him. No whiff of the human. Something quite new is beginning.

A new tension to his bride. Before Johnny might bite and break those nice new teeth, he puts his right arm about his throat to haul him close and tight. ‘Good _morning,_ Jonathan.’ Should he ration the pet name as well? But it’s a lover’s endearment, and a delight to watch him squirm.

‘My head.’ The boy tests his language. Should have thought of that when he pressed him so tight. Well, can’t be helped, and it sounds as if everything still functions. ‘What did you do this time?’

‘Merely sped your healing on its way. Let’s have a look at you now.’ He twists Johnny to face him, leaning on his shoulder to pin him down; with his face held between his palms, Dracula studies his bride. He’s done so well! And so has the blood. Skin even becoming quite ruddy with the semblance of life, eyes sitting sweet in their sockets, and best of all his hair has grown in sufficient quantity that the mortals won’t instantly shy away as if he had plague. ‘I think you might even need a haircut!’

‘And who would be my barber?’

‘Me, naturally.’

Jonathan’s face!

‘What? I managed my own hair well enough, wouldn’t you say?’

He poses and seats Jonathan on the bunk’s edge. Now, did he include the scissors while packing? Jonathan’s shaving kit served him very well and yes, there are the scissors. Johnny doesn’t flinch when the blades open and shut just in front of his eyes, though his lips do part. Does he think that he’ll snip his ears and sheer his flesh off? Daft boy! The blades aren’t near sharp enough for slicing. Although, snipping his ears…regardless.

‘Don’t fret. I haven’t lost my touch with a blade. I do recommend you hold still, though.’

Bestriding Johnny’s legs to keep them locked in place, he casts about for the first time that he saw Mr. Jonathan Harker. The bright young thing who brought a gust of the outside world, promise of his beloved, into his fortress. He expects Johnny to try and drive a knee up into his balls to get him on the floor, finding such a surprise when he stays upright. He’ll have to explain the difference that death creates in the joys of the flesh. But, the boy seems to recognise how futile it would be; perhaps he even remembers the flesh of his wrist twisting closed. He stays placid throughout the trim, stolid in his misery. Sulky. They’ll need to break that habit; he’ll not be lugging a petulant load about the globe.

At last he moves to Johnny’s brow. He keeps the hair long enough for a side parting and goes by rote while he examines those scars. Persisting despite Johnny drinking from Piotr and Valeria and even himself. Still they persist.

As he places the safe side of a scissor blade against the central blemish: ‘What made the scars?’

Johnny’s eyes look up from glaring at his waistcoat. ‘I don’t remember. Can’t you tell?’

‘Oh, everything after you took your dramatic dive is a complete mystery to me. I look forward to hearing every single minute, _disgusting_ detail. You don’t know how envious other men would be of you. Spending all that time in a convent, under the care of those fair, innocent maidens! To say nothing of a fiancée who must surely have been _ecstatic_ to see you again!’

Johnny ‘s lips go tight at the thought of time that he’s lost, and which Dracula knows from Agatha was truly, immensely _dull_. He returns to glaring. Well, another mood. Let him have this one.

Now a comb to make a parting, and the pomade. Another item they’ll need to ration along with clothing. Between the suits bought by him and brought by Johnny it wouldn’t be a problem, but Johnny’s going to be a messy eater for a while yet. The way he dribbled Valeria all over his neck and collar...

For his bride’s first true proper day in their journey together, Dracula shall recreate the suit from when they first met. The jacket and waistcoat recovered from their cruel abandonment in the castle, the trousers replaced at great expense, which Johnny is unlikely to appreciate. Shirts and undergarments laundered as well as well, with a laundress added to his palate – the indignity! – so that they’ll never be short of a fresh collar or shirt front until servants might be hired in England.

Off with the togs he bundled Johnny into for their brief show of embarking! They reek of various stages of healing; they’ll need to be boiled. Perhaps the crew, in addition to providing a dining service, can also supply a laundry copper. Mr. Renfield still trembles with a palsy and cut himself shaving; unfortunate but no harm done.

Perhaps Johnny thinks he’ll dress him up again. It’ll be a pretty pass when he becomes quite such a servant! His bride can dress himself. Though he trembles still Johnny stands tall and his blue eyes never stray from his ever-fixed mark, as it’s on with the clothes; pulling, buttoning, tying his tie with hands shaking from that convenient palsy, finishing with his reliable jacket. The lad surely hates him a little more just for that touch.

Paler, still clammy, slightly shrunken but so very like the Johnathan Harker that blew into his cage like a vision, like a dream. Like a quavering reflection in a mirror, the reflection now the reality. Such a metamorphosis. The lad doesn’t even look at the door. He’s learning. Yet a subtle turn towards the point of escape; now he’s clothed once more in an Englishman’s skin, remember, the crew might listen to him. Care. Take care.

‘Take care, Johnny. It’s rather cold up top at present. And you still so weak. Best wrap up tight.’ He has a spare pair of spectacles, but it might look strange if both of them wear them. The fearful symmetry. Only he will don them and see the world anew, in blue. ‘I can’t wait to properly introduce you.’

Moving towards the deck and he feels _her_ beating harder on his barrier of fog. If he dispelled it to see her, he’d burn. _I can’t let you in!_

His arm under Johnny’s elbow, he carries him in the watered light of a new day. Everyone quite in a flutter from the vanished Valeria, and to a lesser extent the pitiful Portmann. ‘Some fresh air with do you good, dear fellow.’ It pays off. The sea, the sea, the open sea with its swell and stink overpowers Johnny’s new nose, it leaves no room for him to be hypnotised by all the throbbing hearts and flushed cheeks. He grabs for the door frame. Count Dracula is naturally most solicitous of his solicitor. ‘Do come back in, dear Renfield! I apologise, perhaps it was too early to attempt this venture?’

Johnny shoves his hands away once he’s back in the corridor and clutching the rope on the wall for support. There’s gratitude! No matter. There’s also that twitchy young morsel, new Piotr, false Piotr, to flirt with and bait. Peeping into barrels as if Valeria is folded double like one of his more annoying brides. Such a lovely lad. Adorable!

He reels the boy in with talk of Nelson and rum. He appals him, he makes him an accomplice in irreverence, he delights with his show of being mauled by the make-believe monster in the keg. The boy’s entranced. And it’s a weakness on his part, but finally he lets a little menace bleed in. Send him on his way with an extra bit of paranoia.

‘That’s Piotr.’ Which isn’t a question, and when did Johnny get over to the right of him?

He chooses to say: ‘So it would seem.'

‘We ate Piotr. He’s _dead.’_ At least he keeps it to a whisper.

‘ _Is_ he?'

The fingernails at the edge of Johnny's grip are a surprise. If he moves even a little they’ll punch right through his cloak and sleeve, and what a mess that’ll make of his jacket. Johnny says, so serious, ‘Don’t. You _dare_ play games with me. What have you done? How is _he_ Piotr?’

‘I’ve done nothing. Why don’t you ask Piotr what _he’s_ done?’

He almost thought they’d share the lying little lad tonight - but there’s a reek, a fog of guilt about him as surely as the mist that he has breathed about the boat. So, let him stew in it. Let him be one of the last before they reach home. Happy pigs make tenderest meat, but aged meat makes for a better taste. Then Johnny can finally satisfy himself with Piotr, whichever Piotr he settles upon.

Back down below, to introduce him properly to their fellows. Dracula sits him down in the common area first of all; when Sharma and his girl, then Ruthven and his man come in, Johnny’s introduced as ‘Mr. Richard Renfield, my solicitor.’ Sharma overcomes his immediate and evident aversion in order to introduce his girl and shake hands, opening and closing his own again and again after the clasp. Ruthven, hands kept firmly to himself, would be indifferent if he weren’t frantically wondering what Johnny might have lingering in his veins, and how he can avoid him on a boat of this size. His man reeks of disgust. Sharma’s girl hides herself in a corner and doesn’t even come forward when gestured to approach, Sharma has to tempt her to the table with a deck of cards.

Johnny looks so distraught at this first rejection by humanity.

I know it hurts, Johnny, but look what I do for you. He’s fixed in their minds as frail, still so delicate and hardly able to rise in greeting, no reason to think such a sickly man could overpower an old woman, let alone a full grown sailor. Dracula places a hand on his bride’s shoulder for Ruthven to observe. Yes, see how solicitous I am of _my_ man. If this is how I treat my dependant and possible lover, imagine how I might behave to someone _far_ more worthy of my time! See what I could give you.

Sharma’s of course all concern and curiosity, both for a potential patient and for any risk to his own dependant. ‘It is good to see you up and about, Mr. Renfield. I hope you are quite recovered from your illness. Malaria, I believe you said, Count?’

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘The bloodsuckers in Eastern Europe were very nearly fatal.’ Johnny says it with a small _aren’t I lucky laugh_ , but there’s an edge to it that earns him a harder squeeze. Clever Johnny. He knows. Knows Sharma is one who might help him. Meanwhile Ruthven wrinkles his pretty face and mouths _malaria_ , raising his hand to his mouth but without a handkerchief to block the supposed miasma.

‘You needn’t worry, my Lord.’ Sharma never looks away from Johnny. ‘The only way _you_ could catch it is through a bite.’

The good doctor is entirely too perceptive. Perhaps he should have kept Johnny in his box for a few more days. Fattened him up.

Sokolov makes his entrance and tries to appear as if he knows what he’s doing. Deeply regrettable. He deeply apologizes for this trouble on their voyage. A full investigation when they reach England. See if they can detect Valeria and Portmann bobbing in the sea! In the meantime, the captain swears he’s at their disposal.

He should really follow him to check on how his unwitting agent is doing; has there been any changes or revolts in Cabin Number 9? But his equally unwitting toys are so entertaining, and best he shouldn’t leave Johnny alone with them. Sokolov must wait.

Adisa wonders if the sea was particularly rough. As if he’d give any of his larder a sick stomach! Sharma slept very deeply. Who knows how little Yamina, whiling away now with her solitaire, slumbered? ‘And you, Mr. Renfield? Were you able to find some rest?’

Johnny looks away from some spot on the window. ‘I’m afraid I had rather a rough night. A shocking headache.’

You’re think you’re **_so_** witty, Johnny. Let’s make Ruthven the centre of attention. Mr. Renfield has emerged blinking into the day. Surely it is time for Lady Ruthven to make her appearance.

Ruthven deflects and brags to imply that he’s worn his wife out with his prowess. Which no one, of course, believes. Evidently he wants to see poor Dorabella as little as possible, he’s had his fill of pretending after only a few days of marriage.

And Dracula himself is no longer Agatha, for now too much is exactly enough amid such temptation.

Beneath the table he digs his fingertips into the man he’s bought outright, who in turn bought Dorabella. I can make your breath stop and your heart skip a beat, not merely a romantic claim! When I merely touch you here upon your knee, like _this._ I will know how to please the rest of you.

So Ruthven becomes completely and utterly his, without even a nip or nibble.

The company very soon breaks up. Jilted Adisa stalks off, the Sharmas stay to play their cards, Ruthven looks half ready for a fumble save that the Count’s escorting Mr. Renfield back to his cabin; they regrettably have some business to discuss, now both of them are well enough to do so.

When Ruthven gets far enough that he can’t hear them Johnny says, blade sharp, ‘Your methods of seduction leave much to be desired. That was embarrassing to watch.’

He could squeeze his shoulder for that, until he feels the bone and snaps it. All without breaking cloth or skin. But no, a different sort of blow. ‘While you have such _experience_ of your own.’ Tapping his head; ‘I’ve seen all your pitiful methods of courtship. All the cloying sweetness, flutterings and fumblings, when a good honest clasp speaks volumes.’ And, steering him into Cabin number 4, ‘What do you think of our other fellow travellers?’

Wary, Johnny lists them in the order of consequence his mind assigns them. ‘Dr. Sharma seems quite interested n my condition.’ He's clearly hoping to cultivate that interest. ‘The little girl is nervous of us all. And the manservant doesn’t like you.’

‘Very good observation. _Renfield.’_ Now, which name does Johnny despise more, his pet name usurped, or a fake name? ‘I’d almost say you don’t need your journal back to keep your skills up.’

‘Would you give me another journal? And what would I fill it with? More endless ramblings of you as God.’

‘Yes, I took a peek at your manuscript. Masterfully written. If you grow tired of your current career, novelist would suit you very well indeed.’

Johnny covers his eyes. Covers his mouth. Slaps his jacket and discovers the notebook that he purposefully left inside the jacket, complete with pencil. Takes it out yet doesn’t dare try to write in case his fingers and brain should once more betray him. He slams a fist on the wall hard enough for the boards to split but not break, not yet. Getting stronger. Rationing, such rationing while they’re still on a such a breakable vessel. When they’re safe in the new house he can break whatever he pleases.

Dracula goes to one knee to retrieve the offending, fallen notebook. On one knee he offers it back to Johnny, who prefers to bury his face in his hands and quite spoil the hair they took such a time arranging. ‘You really took everything from me. Even my writing.’

‘You’ll have it back-’

‘If I _behave,’_ Johnny apes him, whinging like a true boy. ‘Why should I do that, if this is the treatment I can expect for eternity? What have you even given me in return? What _can_ you give? Besides a box to store me in when you’re tired of me, and broken bones?’

Daring, very daring. And admittedly true. He’s been a cruel task master. There must be some reward. Still; ‘Would you prefer it if I transformed you into a drooling servant, clamouring for the chance to kiss my hand or lick my boot?’

As his lad sits in the chair, by that box he so hates, he says ‘I’d prefer it if you killed me.’

‘But then you’ll never see your Mina again. Not even for one last farewell.’

‘I’ll never see her again in any case. Since she’s not on this ship.’ He’s clasping the arms of his chair, ready to push himself up. The boy thinks he can invite in his own final death. Arrogant little!

‘I asked one of the crew,’ when did he do _that_ , when did he get the chance, ‘the _only_ woman on board now that Valeria’s gone is that Lady Dorabella. Mina isn’t here. So, either you’ve killed her-’

Enough. He sets his hands atop those of his bride to crush them flat against the wood. Nails him in place. ‘Have a little faith. I _told_ you that you would see her tonight.’

‘She. Is _dead._ And you won’t let me see her, even in my mind.’ Johnny’s fangs are out for the avenging of Mina Murray, when he never was grateful or eager for the times he’s been fed.

Ah, so tedious. Why these fixations? Why does she have such a hold on him? Why the pull and tug between them, even now that he’s beyond her, why does he strain for her face? What is it about these two, why is she.

_Why is Mina Johnny’s sun?_


	9. Interlude I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we take a break from our quarrelsome quartet, to allow some of the other characters a brief space to make a start on their own threads.

Sharma watches Yamini playing at her cards, and he should pause her in her game soon to see how it is with his child, for she always gives nothing of herself to the world through her face and only a little more with her hands. Not even to himself. Good, that she’ll never betray herself with a sneer or frown; unfortunate as well since the world will take it as an insult or defiance. Her very stoicism will betray her after all. People would break her for daring to deny them her thoughts.

What should happen to her if he’s broken first?

There are several things that are terribly wrong on this ship, Mr. Renfield is merely the latest. Whatever sapped him nearly dry and left him to struggle back to some form of health, it is perhaps not malaria. Something else that he caught from a bite? Simply looking at him starts the scar itching. Sharma has the strangest fancy: of a vision of Renfield closed inside a dark cramped space, clawing at the walls of it and weeping. Not unlike that thing in the night. In the coffin.

And why does he think this? Since Renfield’s no howling corpse, merely a sick and sad man. Something’s happened to that man beyond his illness. He’s a wretched wrecked being, yet still beneath the exhaustion, there’s a desperation turning deadly.

How could the Count dare to touch Renfield so openly, squeeze his shoulder in such a brazen, foolhardy manner? He saw in Renfield’s eyes just at that moment when Dracula’s fingers grew tight, he looked ready to grab that hand and bite or break it. What might have the unwitting man Dracula brought on board with him, locked in here with all of them for the journey ahead?

And he can’t afford the release and the weakness of being afraid. Yamini depends on him, he will not have her be afraid, he will protect her, whatever might be on this ship, Renfield or something else; he will not let it in, he will stand guard in front of Yamini. But don’t let her see, let her see only my smile and my love, I love her, I will never let anything happen to you, my life.

He waves to catch her eye. When she finally turns to look at him he raises his hands to speak clearly, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your game, but’ see how very much I love you, my love, I love you; ‘the rest of the journey will be fine. However, you must take care and not go up to the deck without me. Or go anywhere without me.’

With her empty hand she asks ‘Danger?’

‘Yes. I do think the captain is good,’ he moves closer to her, ‘but it is better not to trust anyone. For we don’t know what happened to the lady or the man who disappeared. Until we do, and when we do, we must keep ourselves safe. So, you must stay close to me, for you are so good a girl, my darling, and I will keep you safe, I will never let anything happen to you.’

* * *

What Yamini is focused on is the feel of the cards between her fingers and the cloth beneath her palms and she’ll think of nothing else, not of the dark man,

what about the man he brought to the table, he is so sad as if he will cry, he looks for help for he can’t help himself, can she or Papa help him, would they be able to do anything for him,

would the dark man allow it,

that sick sad man belongs to him and he loves him and he will not let him go,

the cards are soft and well used, she’s looking for a queen to complete the row and cone closer to winning for this is a good game, it needs nothing but her eyes fingers and wits, she’ll play for all the day so she won’t feel sick from the rocking of the sea

and she won’t have to pay heed to the rich man staring at her or going up on the deck with the cold and wind, papa thought she would mind but no she doesn’t,

there she is, there is the Queen of Spades, but no place to put her and Yamini needs a red queen, here is a red seven of hearts, fitting for there are seven passengers now and will they be safe in what’s to come

don’t think of that, the cards, just the cards, why did we ever leave our home why can’t we go home,

don’t bother papa he has so many worries love you papa I won’t be trouble I won’t be bother I will make no trouble I will not be the troublesome brat I will draw no heed or attention I will watch and protect you papa

* * *

Every time Sokolov tries to ease the tightness in his guts and bowels, struggling to think of something else, he keeps twisting about and returning to it for it can’t be evaded: two people missing. Full investigation.

This is the end. It’s all finished. Few want a captain who cost a crewman his hand, who wants one who let another man and a damn _duchess_ vanish under his command? When they dock at England and it comes out, because the passengers will talk even if the crew is loyal, he can’t cover this up.

A drink, please god, just one. Gargle a glug of cologne to hide the reek on his breath, ugh, hope no one wonders why his breath is perfumed.

He has to be ready, should any of the passengers have further questions. Why no questions? Why are they so _calm?_ Two people vanished from the deck of a ship in the middle of the ocean! Why are they not rioting?

Madame Baluar. He should check on her again. And her nurse, she’s vital now. He can’t lose anyone else on this voyage. Even if a duchess and a deckhand were swept overboard at least he can say he helped a woman survive. Two people die and one lives, not a balance but it helps.

All the crew are busy at their tasks, all passengers are either on deck or in their own cabins, so he can unlock and slip into Cabin No. 9 with no eyes upon him. Feels quite illicit. Like sneaking out for a night with the mates, or in through a widow’s window at twilight. Hardly at all like it’s his own ship.

The little nurse looks even more presentable than she did this morning, and then she looked a mile better than the mess she was yesterday. Sokolov sees at last why Balaur chose _her_ to take care of his wife. She looks quite professional now she’s in a cleaner gown and her hair’s tamed, under control. Looks civilised and even pretty. She’s concerned, she’s been weeping. Weeping.

God she’s dead, dead, that’s _three_ and Balaur will be furious. He’ll bring the law down on them all, flay them alive! ‘Miss,’ his throat sticks together; the shit feels ready to burst out of him, ‘are you all right? Is Madame Balaur.’

She’s a quick one, gets his meaning right away. ‘She’s still sleeping! This is,’ she touches a corner of an eye, ‘because I was worried, but she breathes easier.’

By coming that bit nearer he can see that Madame Balaur’s breathing does seem less like a struggle; it still husks and rasps but there’s less pain in it. Her left cheek rests on the pillow, it’s as if she’s looking towards him in greeting. He thinks her hair is damp from her hair being washed rather than sweat. The nurse must have washed her. Remember to bring more soap and water! ‘You think there’s any improvement?’ If he can deliver an even slightly healthy patient to England, that will surely be a success?

‘It might be, she woke earlier today. She wanted to know where we were, but she was too tired to speak or stay awake for long.’

Glory to God, she must be fighting the sickness off. She’s sensible. If it goes on like this, she might even be well by the time they reach England! He could kiss this girl for her tender care, or he could shake her hand, only he fancies she’s somehow of the sort that means it would be improper to do either to. Where _did_ Balaur pick up such a woman, such a terribly English woman, in Bulgaria? Really, why would she take this task at all? Now he is here, so close to the pair of them, what might be lingering on or in her after so many days with a sick woman? He’s stayed too long in here. Should go.

‘That is, very good to hear. I will be back with your meal at once, I wanted to check first.’

‘Thank you, sir. Sir, if I could ask something of you?’

If she asks to leave in order to breathe fresh air, to get out of this cabin where sickness is roiling, to mingle among the other passengers; what is he supposed to say? That he’s been paid extremely well to keep both her patient and her, too, in here, for all four weeks of the journey? What if she grows distressed and cries out? Closes with him and tries to leave that way?

Instead what she asks for is merely a bible. Well, _merely._ ‘I will see what I can do, but I do not think we have one in your language.’ He can’t exactly ask the English Ruthvens and Renfield or the English speaking count, doctor and Ruthven’s companion if any of them have one to hand. This nurse might have some words of German, and the duchess seemed the type to have her own copy, but Sokolov won’t be the one to dig through her belongings or order another to do it.

‘It doesn’t matter what language it is, truly. Can you get me one?’ She can’t keep up her smile; ‘I must have one.’

What, he wonders - he wonders **_why_** he wonders - really is the precise nature of her agreement with Balaur and her journey alongside his wife? With the tightness and pain ripping fresh in his guts: her deal might be quite unlike the one he struck, and her idea of what’s happening here quite unlike his. He steps back so she can’t grab his sleeve, he looks past her fingers as he judges how best to avoid her, and so he sees far _far_ too late the dark shape on the boards by his boot that is first a cross and second, as she closes on him very hard about his wrist, he thinks it is quite possibly drawn in blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now you see, the plot grows thicker, and everyone's luck starts looking sicker :)
> 
> I promise, non-dream sexy times a coming in the next chapter!
> 
> Mea culpa, but watch out for some updates on this one, as information might be added (for Sokolov in particular) in the next few days.


	10. Mina III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you reach the end of the chapter, you might see why it took so long to write it. But hey, real world sex scene at last! Of sorts.
> 
> (cringes in authorial embarrassment)
> 
> A tad spoilerish, but; much mention of menstruation and all its aspects.

Sokolov sees the bloody cross, dear god. Quick! ‘Forgive me,’ for men are always ready to forgive a contrite, abject girl, ‘I’ve made such a mess. I forgot to clean it. I’ll mop it up, if you just give me more water and rags.’

Please God, he’s more puzzled now than suspicious. ‘What happened?’

Mina presses a hand to her stomach and splays her fingers wide. ‘My woman’s trouble. It’s always heavy, and it came on so sudden! I didn’t have near enough cloths. I’m sorry that it got on the floor, I should have mopped it up properly.’

Success! Men also never like to be reminded that women bleed. Sokolov does better than most of them as he looks contrite, and finally lets her get hold of his sleeve even as he steps away. Yes, imagine how pitiful she must have been, scurrying across the floor and mopping up her drips and drabs. Oh, have pity! And keep your eyes on me, sir, no need to see how old the blood is, or any of the _other_ crosses.

‘It is no matter, mistress. **_I_** am sorry that you have had to struggle.’ He searches and finds the way, in his mind, to amend it all. ‘I’ll get you cloths, and water.’

‘And a bible!’ She makes him work to tug his jacket from her fingers.

‘Yes, that.’ Off he trots. Back into the world and away from the bleeding broken women.

The sticky itch and prickle between her legs as she sits drives her mad. It really will be good to have fresh cloths. She’ll have to keep herself sealed up tight if Agatha’s right about the beast’s lack of control.

Some of her clothes appeared in the night, fresh shifts and drawers. Why didn’t he leave her staunching cloths and girdle? Might be he doesn’t know what they are. He’s been shut up in his castle without a living female for company in centuries. And when he was alive, did he _ever_ concern himself with the suffering of women? A great warlord is how Agatha described him, focused entirely on the battle. He wouldn’t ever think of a woman’s mess and torment under her skirts.

Well. He’ll think of it now. He will smell it on her. Him and Johnny.

Sokolov returns balancing two immense pitchers and a whole armful of clean scraps. After he’s dumped all that on the table there’s one more thing brought out from the pit of his other arm, the leather warm when it falls into her hands, it feels almost like living skin again. Is it _his_ bible? Does he bring it for her sake, or more for Agatha’s? His eyes do linger on the bunk before he’s quick sharp out the door again.

Why doesn’t he stay? Yes, he thinks Agatha’s sick, but he can’t stay long enough to give Mina even a chance to reel him in? So he’s really Dracula’s servant. But, he brought her the bible and plenty of water to rinse the already sodden mess between her legs.

One, two drips landing on the floor before she can catch them, when the makeshift girdle comes off. The usual black clots amid shocking bright red. She stops the gap with a twist of rag so there’s time enough to sponge the dried patches off her thighs and try to get it all out of her hair, before that dries stiff as well and tugs on the skin. Time to finish making a new girdle and padding it thoroughly. Oh fresh, relatively virgin cloth!

Agatha’s already sweated again after their morning wash, so her swaddling needs checking as well. She hasn’t pissed herself again, likely since Mina hasn’t managed to get enough water into her. They’re in the middle of the ocean, yet not enough water for Agatha! _Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink!_ One cup then, for Mina to get the sour taste out of her own mouth, two cups that go mostly down Agatha’s throat rather than her chin. One bowl to draw out their blood from the rags, hers and Agatha’s mingling and diluting.

And then nothing to do save wait and, to think of something other than the pain in her guts, look through the book, which is in a language Mina can’t even recognise. Agatha would know immediately. She tries out the sounds, these impenetrable words. For a game she tries to find any familiar names and places in the text, and so try to piece together the Old Testament or the New. See if she can find stories she learned in childhood.

The edges were once gilt, and what can Dracula possibly fear in the Bible? The crucifix, the symbol of Christ, she understands that. What does Agatha think a book can do to him? If he can’t see the pages and he doesn’t understand…what is this? _Russian?_ If it’s words that he doesn’t know in a book neither he nor she can read, what power would it really have over him? What would Agatha even do with this book?

Shadows. Where did they come from? Has she wasted the afternoon already in cleaning and fooling about with the book? The lamps need to be lit. With the evening comes the night, with the night comes the Count.

But here’s Sokolov again, breathing hard and so wonderfully alive. He brings warm broth for Agatha and roast pork with apples for Mina. As she’s getting ready to feed Agatha, finally he lingers. ‘What is it, that is wrong with her?’

How much to tell him? Some little truth to prepare him for when.

Just now she can’t even muster the hope for _when_. Rather, _if_ Agatha gets a chance to speak to him.

‘She’s fighting a terrible battle.’ And, she can’t resist it while she’s plumping up the rather flat pillow, ‘What were you told about all this?’

He takes his time to answer. Is he thinking properly about this, beginning to pick at the holes in what he’s been told? Please. ‘Your employer, he said I must get her to England with all speed. He said there is treatment waiting for her there?’

‘I hope that there is.’ Perhaps that detective friend of Agatha’s can help? ‘And did he say that we _must_ stay in here for the whole journey?’ It’s very important to stick the blame onto this mysterious employer, rather than make Sokolov feel he’s the one to blame for their confinement.

More surprised than accused, he says, ‘Of course. Balaur said, was important no one breathe the same air as the both of you, any more than necessary.’

Balaur, it’s what the monster’s calling himself in this transaction? Dracula’s not keeping them in here under his own name? What’s his game?

Picking up the broth from where he set it down, moving to Agatha’s side, Mina asks ‘Then how is it that _you’re_ the unlucky one who has to come in here all the time?’

‘You are my passengers.’ Sokolov tries to make himself tall as he folds his arms. ‘Naturally I should see to all your needs, and stand responsible for your wellbeing.’

Observe, Mina. Understand. Sokolov has authority and confidence in his role, if not in himself. He’s much higher than a simple sailor. He says _my passengers_ rather than _our passengers._ Is he the captain? If they have the _captain_ on their side the work’s half done! Wake up Agatha, fast!

‘I know that Agatha will be so grateful for all of your kindness. She might wake for longer tomorrow. She did so want to talk to you herself, thank you for all that you’ve done for us.’

‘That. I would like that.’ He seems to want to say something else, but instead he goes.

She keeps wasting their chances like some dimwit in a fairy tale wasting three wishes on fripperies. Is he interested? Please let there be doubt sprouting in him. The _captain!_ He does want to speak to Agatha on the morrow, so. So, all Mina has to do is keep them both alive until then.

Besides, it comes to her like a smack on the cheek, the beast can’t kill _either_ of them yet. He made up this story and dropped them into it; he wouldn’t go to all this bother only to make Sokolov the _captain_ suspicious if she or Agatha disappeared from a locked room in the night, like those two others who went missing. He considers himself responsible for them.

That does mean that they have an evening ahead of them in which they will, most likely, not die. Just look at how Agatha is faring, while not dying.

The broth has cooled and is growing blots and beads of fat. Agatha’s mouth is slack again. It’s a constant spooning of broth, tipping her chin up and massaging her throat to encourage her to swallow, wiping it up when she dribbles, repeating the process. There must be some level in which Agatha is still conscious enough to swallow, is she aware of this? This ordeal of feeding? Mina has an idea truly unconscious patients aren’t even capable of swallowing, so they wither and die.

If events had been dreadful but still normal. If Johnny, Johnny _Johnny_.

She must take a moment to breathe. Breathe.

If he had only been terribly sick with a mortal ailment. If she’d found him in Budapest waiting for her in a sickbed instead of walking when he should be eternally resting, is this how they would have fed him? She’d be sitting by his bedside for weeks dripping life back into him a spoon at a time. She hates the need for this even while it’s keeping Agatha alive. It’s frustrating, it’s messy, she’s sick of doing it. How long would it have been before she tired of doing it for Johnny, and how long before she began to resent him for being too weak to rise, keeping her shackled to his side in a strange land with their money running out?

Books always talk about staying faithfully by a loved one’s bedside; they never mention the boredom and struggling with such a simple task, the dread when something seems to go down the wrong way and you watch as they cough and cough and fear this is the time they’ll choke.

Agatha’s breath comes easier as broth slip slides inside her. She does look as if she’s resting easier. Perhaps with her waking and returning to sleep by herself, she broke free of whatever nightmares Dracula wove about her. Perhaps.

Once all the broth and another cup of water is downed, supper time for Mina. The roast pork with apples has gone cold. The flesh still wet in its juices makes spit pool in her mouth again, she swallows to stop any chance of vomiting. Penny dreadfuls say that pork is very like human flesh. Could Dracula have suborned the kitchens? Is _this_ where the two missing people ended up? He would find it terribly amusing to feed everyone to each other.

Agatha would say, _Eat! Keep your strength up, what does it matter what the food is? Worry where the meat comes from later_. Chew and swallow it all down, try to keep it down.

Nothing to do now, except take turns about the room to revive her dead legs. Burn the energy she has stored up. She walks so much back in England and she never knew it! Travelling to and from the school in mornings and evenings, trips out with Jonathan or journeys to Lucy’s home, walks about the classroom during lessons, even moving between rooms in her lodging. So simple and so enormous a luxury: being able to move and travel when a space grows too confining! It’s clear now that Mina wouldn’t make for a good true nun.

The laugh’s bursting up like a bubble, a hiccup, a belch, a rush of puke. Mina digs her fingers into her arms. She bends double to catch hold and trap the laughter. One laugh and she’ll be done for, it’ll be an easy escape and a slippery slope and down she’ll fall.

Train timetables. Lesson plans. History beginning with William the Conqueror, list all the kings and queens of England. By the time she reaches Richard III she can breathe easier. She keeps going until Victoria, who seems inclined to rule forever.

Back to the bedside, the bible and trying to find some trace of God or Christ, one single familiar name in these pages. There’s some sacred feeling in the weight of the book but what good’s that weight when there’s no comprehending it? There’s no way of searching to find some passage that will help her spirits, or make the beast howl if she shouts it at him. No comfort here. She presses the closed book beneath her hands until she can almost feel the leather of the cover start to squash and shift under her palms.

Her mind, it can’t sit still. It flickers and flutters, calls up dreadful images. Beauty from the fairy-tale, sitting at the dinner table, waiting for the Beast imprisoning her to come and gobble her up. No. Pilgrim’s Progress: _he had gone but a little way, before he spied a foul fiend coming across the field to meet him._ No. The cabin door opening to show only darkness, something wearing Johnny stepping forward to stand in the doorway. Staring at her, blood at his mouth, his dead eyes covered with flies in the moment before he springs. No.

Nothing to do but wait, as her stomach churns and her guts pull and twist so that her flow begins. She goes walking again so the blood won’t leak and soak through to her skirts. She won’t be mortified like that in front of him.

It’s when Mina’s furthest away from Agatha that the door clicks, it’s too soon! Things she should have done that she didn’t, she can’t now. She wishes first and foremost she could have changed the girdle so that she doesn’t have to stare them down with blood squashing and cooling between her legs. She runs back to the bunk so she doesn’t have to see him oozing his way in and she can pretend she never left Agatha’s side.

Over her shoulder she sees him in his evening dress and his grin. His face stays still but the rest of him turns sideways to allow for _Johnny._

She hates this moment and she’s dreamed of it. He’s not the skeleton of the nunnery, he’s not hollowed out and stretched over something else, a creature peering through his eyes. He’s as he was the last time that she saw him. Before he got onto the train away from her to start travelling to his death. He’s gotten back his suit, his hair, his weight, it’s all back. He never left her for that dreadful job. All just a nightmare. She’ll run to hold him to bury her face in his shoulder and smell him, finally let the tears out.

Though. His face. Not happy to see her. As if he’s looking for a clue or some explanation, and not from Mina.

‘It’s her?’ he asks the grinning ghoul.

Flushing hot through her, knowing that he doesn’t know her. Again. After all his talking and the coaxing from Agatha over that last day, a wave of Dracula’s hand and she’s wiped from his mind’s eye again. Pain stuffs up her throat. The tears sting. She’ll not let them fall! Not where the monster can see.

He, now, he takes Johnny by the chin and turns him away from her – he does it so gently! – to look at him. ‘Yes, Johnny. Just as I promised.’ He twists Johnny back to face her clearly once more. ‘And as I promised you, Miss Mina, though I doubt you’ve been good enough to deserve it. I really must be growing soft.’

And then she can see that Johnny sees her. Truly. Really. He breaks the beast’s hold; he’s reaching out to her. Agatha would call her a fool. Will they ever have this chance again? How foolish they were to not have been kissing and embracing for all the time that they had before this! One hand clasp, one last one. A last kiss on his cold hand, a last kiss from him to each of her knuckles. One more. Oh, just one more!

His arm thin but firm under the sleeve, and his shoulder solid. His chin, his cheek. Cool but not clammy, like the outside of a church rather than the damp walls inside. His mouth closed tight to keep in his sad smile. His eyes. He’s been crying. He can still cry, her blue eyed Johnny.

‘Mina.’ His breath’s barely a wisp, no smell to it save a trace of metal, a ghost of the reek she gets from her soaking rags. She knew that he had very likely fed. For him to have all this weight back and his hair grown this long, he has certainly fed. But he was forced to it!

He says, ‘Mina, I’m sorry. He wouldn’t tell me where you were, he did something in my mind. I couldn’t see your face again.’

‘My Johnny.’ Let there be this moment. Feel this. Let him see how much she loves him, how she has missed him.

‘Mina, you shouldn’t.’ He tries to get out from under her. She’ll never let him go again! ‘I killed a boy. Or. I help kill him. I held him down and drank from him.’

Oh Johnny, she already knew that. It’s a blow that landed hours ago and she survived it then. He’s hurt, he’s in pain from what he’s done, and she can’t do anything to soothe him when she’s so _glad_ he feels it. If he does feel remorse he’s not a monster, and she can help him in every other way, so she must be sparing with her comfort.

‘Johnny. Look at me.’ He looks up from their twined hands, seems to understand her but nothing else in this world. ‘I know you. I _do._ Yes, you did that, but that monster made you do it. He forced you, same as with your manuscript. It’s him, always it’s him.’

‘Rather harsh, Mina. I _made_ him do nothing.’ The beast’s moved from the door. Where is he? ‘Johnny knows what he needs to survive, but he needs a little push once in a while.’

The beast is watching Agatha while she was engrossed in Johnny. He’s deceived her. He’s given her Johnny, so he thinks she’ll give him Agatha. Not on her life! She’ll stand in front of her to keep him away, where are the candles?! But a grip comes hard about her wrists and an iron bar around her waist pulls her tight against Johnny, who is muttering ‘Careful.’ His chest feels like rock, like a slab, like a tombstone, solid from front to back. ‘Wait, wait.’

‘I won’t let him!’

‘And I won’t let him hurt you!’

Dracula turns back to them all puzzled. As if he can’t understand why he is merely watching Agatha instead of starting his latest meal, surprised to realise they’re still here. ‘I really thought we’d be done with all these protests, Mina.’ His eyes slide to Johnny. ‘Hungry, dearest? Do feel free to start without me.’

The growl starts level with her breast and batters her ear. It’s not just anger but a word, it’s Johnny saying in immense pain, **_‘No.’_** Get away, she must. Nowhere to run. They never left that convent cell, only now there’s no cell door she can bar this time and no sword to wave about.

‘Yes.’ That’s all the monster says as he turns his back and steps nearer to Agatha, Mina can’t see her face, she’s gone into the dark.

Johnny pushes her out and away at arm’s length, only then his fingers curl to dig into her shoulders, now they're at her elbows to get a better hold. She can’t get out. Tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow, there will be bruises, there might be blood. She reaches for his face but he’s too far away now to touch or get a blow in.

‘Johnny, _please.’_ Her words creak, they whine, they can’t get out.

His eyes flicker. Past his lips are his teeth growing longer with each pant. If he closes his eyes now they’ll open again with something burrowed up into his head. Seeing everything with hunger. And she’s the first thing it'll see, not like this oh god _not like this_

a twist in her belly, it’s running slick down her thigh

_thank you god_

‘Johnny.’ It sticks below her jaw so she nearly chokes. ‘Don’t need to, no need, Johnny, I’m already bleeding.’ She spreads her legs as for once her horrid leaking body is a blessing, there’s a fresh gout of blood sinking into the cloths. ‘Johnny, drink from _here.’_

The eyes close. It’s all over? But it’s Johnny who opens his eyes, full of horror and disgust but still Johnny. He says ‘Can’t.’ And, a pause long enough that it’s a request, ‘Kill me.’

_‘You can._ Do it. Take it,’ as she's taking up his hand that is suddenly loose on her arm, to lock her fingers through his with the nails too long for a man’s hand _don’t think on that_ and just pressing him to her stomach, ‘take it, drink.’

Johnny sets his jaw in that old way which means _here I am, I am ready, I don’t want to, but I will do it,_ a blow she wasn’t expecting; those tears finally touch her cheeks. He hurries her back to the wall (not _forcing_ , there’s all the difference in the world) her back meets the wood right as he falls out of her sight. He’s shifting in her skirts. So close to her flow, he clutches the back of her knee when he catches the scent. His nails in, through her skin. Pain, sharp.

He peeks up over the bunch he’s made of her dress. He asks ‘Yes?’

She cups his cheek. Lord, help her. But: ‘Yes.’

He kisses her palm and the base of her thumb and she thinks between breath and breath he might bite after all, but he ducks away under the skirt. His nails now find the belt of the girdle, he grabs it like he might rip it off so she braces for the pull and tear, but another gush falling out of her and he stills. She feels the bridge of his nose press into the crease where her body becomes her leg, she hears him breathe her in. Her heart is beating harder down there than it does in her breast.

His face comes away to make room for his nails pulling at her drawers; she pictures him piercing her skin again to latch and suckle there instead of her neck. He wouldn’t! Now he rips the girdle so simply with no great effort on his part. His hair brushing her hip, his cheek against her thigh. God, she _feels_ him suck the rags, his cheek stretching and a sound like drinking soup or squeezing a bath sponge. Insane. Mad.

He leaves the girdle still hanging around her right leg to sniff in her bloody curls, his shoulders push her legs wider so she’ll lose her balance if she doesn’t get a hold of something. His lips are cold and his tongue! The rooting and shifting presses one especially sodden clump against her thigh, then his chill tongue running across her hair, the skin of her thigh, then up, up. The last time he did this he stopped to complain of hairs getting caught in his teeth!

A kiss to the plump flesh on either side of her cleft. He traces those nails over the back of a knee; her leg, not her brain, pulls it away from him and slides her calf up his arm. She nearly abandons it when there’s tweed scratching at her calf instead of his precious skin, only he reaches up to stroke, soothe and keep her leg on his shoulder.

She opens, opens and he tucks in at last. She feels his teeth pass over her lips and folds, the length of his tongue grows warmer, an old friend but dear god, longer than it ever was before. For a wonder her body continues to help them, a clench and release inside herself and a rush down onto that curling questing thing. His teeth catch and tug with no real aim, his lips are so soft upon hers. He licks her not quite by accident in that way she loves, the way they found together that she loves, that’s when she has to grab for his shoulder as pleasure _yes_ tremors start in circles, even while he chases her blood.

This is madness, mad, Alice in her Wonderland protesting and the Cheshire cat with his bloody grin saying _We’re all mad here_ , Agatha for daring to taunt the monster and Johnny for what he’s been made into and made to do, and Mina herself because it amuses the beast to see her crack and shatter. Come back to me Johnny, let the taste of me and my blood wash him from you.

She bends double over him. She must lean on the shoulder that her leg isn’t slung over. She’ll buckle and fold around him, take him to the floor with her. Johnny licks again and something in her groin twists something tight in her neck. She can see Dracula sitting down, his elbows on his widespread knees, hands clasped and mouth open. Not a drop of blood on him. Fascinated.

Mina tries to get straight again and back to her feet only, her foot, her one foot that was dead, can’t hold her.

‘Please, don’t stop on my account. It’s beautiful.’

His words go straight to the core of her.

‘You know,’ as he sits up straight himself, as Johnny’s hand slips inside her drawers and around to clutch and stroke, ‘I think this deserves a larger audience.’

He has Agatha in his arms the next time that Mina can see, pressing her cheek to his, commanding her to wake, come, come and see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to have a 'drinking menstrual blood' scene. I just had to. Apart from anything else, it's logical. However, I did try to break the mould by having it be Mina and Johnny instead of Agatha and Dracula!


End file.
